One Black Feather
by Shadsie
Summary: Once a year, Pit grew a single black feather. Palutena plucked it away. When the world is cruel, what happens to an angel whose wings are all black feathers? Was he made to be expendable? A tale of sickness, sacrifice and poor choices. Co-write with 23Blenders.
1. Lucky Wings

_**Disclaimer and Notes:**_ _Kid Icarus: Uprising and its characters belong to Nintendo and Mr. Sakurai. No profit is sought from this fan fiction story._

 _This tale is based upon a lengthy and involved chat-roleplay between Shadsie and 23Blenders. The concepts belong to both of us while Shadsie is responsible for the novelization. This is a rather dark and dramatic plotline and there will be some grisly details. If you like darkfic, hang on tight. If you don't, there's a back button that is imminently click-able._

* * *

 **ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **A Kid Icarus: Uprising Fan Fiction by Shadsie and 23Blenders**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Lucky Wings**

It happened every year after his summer-molt. When the fresh feathers of fall started to come in on the tops of his wings, Pit always grew, inexplicably, one black feather. It was never predicable - the way it came in. Sometimes it was on the right wing, sometimes on the left. Occasionally, it came out prominent, glaring back from a pristine wall of white and at other times it was hidden under and among the white feathers and would start growing big and growing out before Palutena found it when grooming Pit's wings. It never molted out on its own. Palutena would always pluck it ("Ouch, Lady Palutena!") to keep Pit's wings "clean."

Pit took to calling it his "lucky feather" after the goddess told him a story about black cats that was passed around among the mortals. Many humans thought of black felines as bad luck, but also as magical creatures. Pit had a hard time imagining this. He liked kitties and didn't think any of them could ever be bad luck. According to the tale, every unlucky black cat had on its body one pure white hair and in this hair was concentrated powerful magic and good luck. Any human that was able to find and take a black cat's white hair was to expect to be quite blessed. Pit asked Palutena if this was true ("You would know, you're a goddess, right?"). She made the excuse that cat hair wasn't in her domain. Her all-smelling nose was allergic!

Angel feathers, on the other hand – were well within her jurisdiction. She wanted Pit's wings to be well-kept, ready to take on her Power of Flight at any time his services were needed and she wanted them to reflect her pure white light. That meant no keeping "lucky feathers." After all, if his feathers were white, the black one had to be bad luck – so she told him.

When Pit saw his reflection in the Mirror of Truth down in the Underworld, he saw both of his wings covered in black feathers. He immediately thought the reflection was a bad omen. Then, of course, the reflection kicked him and it hurt – so it was. Everything just got more complicated from there. Dark Pit was as independent as a black cat. He skirted the edges of Pit's world like a shadow in an alley looking for scraps, hissing and spitting for a fight whenever he was near, but Pit knew early on that he wasn't exactly "bad."

If Dark Pit had been a "pure" copy, he would have held an allegiance to the Underworld as strong as Pit's allegiance was to Palutena and the world of Light. As it was, the two spent a lot of time alternately dodging and running into one another. After a bit of fighting, Pit just had more pressing things to do than to go out of his way to track down his shadow. The shadow, for his part seemed less like he wanted to destroy the original for destruction's sake and only like he was trying to figure out what he was and like he needed to prove himself through battle and a slew of insults.

After that, the two angels learned that they were two halves of a whole. The cast-shadow could not live without the light, but the Goddess Palutena suspected that their connection wasn't complete. While the dark half complained of having been unconscious during the time when Pit's spirit had been sleeping in the Ring of Chaos, Dark Pit had suffered no pain or illness while Pit was clinging to life with ruined wings. They'd saved each other and that was all that they or any of the Pantheon needed to know. Whether they physically needed each other to exist or not seemed irrelevant in the days after Hades was beaten back in the last great cosmic war. The relationship between the Pits was distant and vaguely antagonistic for a while, yet they ended up not as enemies or rivals so much as brothers who fought as brothers do.

Pit was happy whenever he saw Dark Pit – "unlucky feathers" and all. They saw little of each other for a long time. "Pittoo" was off and about in the world, trying to find his place in it. Palutena cautioned Pit that he needed to let his twin take his time to find himself. After many months, Pit learned his twin was working for Viridi. Neither Pittoo nor Viridi gave any particular reason for this arrangement, only that it was "in their mutual interest." Pit guessed that it had something to do with flight. Viridi was allowing Dark Pit her version of the Power of Flight in exchange for odd jobs. Pit could definitely see Pittoo being her "hitman" of sorts, at least until he found something to defeat that was powerful enough for him to get his independent flight back. So long as they did not assault the humans or get into any of Lady Palutena's other affairs, what they did was none of Skyworld's concern.

Pit couldn't help but think that in the time since Pittoo was born, he had not grown his annual black feather. It seemed like Pittoo had taken every bit of that from him – all things dark, sleek, shiny and swarthy. This probably meant that Dark Pit never grew any white feathers. If he did, he probably plucked them – himself, and not by a goddess' hand.

The white angel was away when the dark one made a random visit. Dark Pit had arrived on Skyworld after using his limited flight for the day to the main island of Skyworld instead of to the place that Viridi had ordered him to go. He smirked to himself, knowing that he could get away with this. It was just one of his little ways of letting her know that while he was in the nature-goddess' employ, it was entirely on his terms, not hers. He knew that one day's "slacking off" wouldn't be enough for her to terminate their contact, nor, would she, at this point be able to draw him back and force him to work until at least the next day. Dark Pit had spent his flight and his wings would burn if she brought him back to her temple, so Viridi would just have to whine and grouse. Much like a cat, Dark Pit didn't care for scolding, yet he also did not respond to it.

"Oh, Pittoo!" Palutena said as he entered her palace.

"Don't call me that!" Dark Pit growled. "I came to see Pit. Where is he?"

"Oh, he's on a mission," the Goddess of Light said. She turned her attention to her viewing-pool and concentrated. Dark Pit thought it was pretty interesting to see the working of the Power of Flight from this perspective. She really did look like she was playing one of Pit's video games. Palutena moved her wrist with grace, brandishing her staff almost like it was a conductor's baton.

Dark Pit stared for a while.

"Oh, he'll be back before long," the goddess assured. "Oh! Pit! Watch out for those trees! Yeah, you heard someone else… Dark Pit is here. Hey! I told you to watch out!" She straightened the flight-path and turned to her guest. "We just needed to take care of some stray Reapers outside of their jurisdiction. Make yourself comfortable. I insist."

"Thanks," Dark Pit said blandly. He wandered off across the island. He felt a bit sweaty after the flight up here and thought he might go ahead and go to the main island's hot spring if Pit didn't return promptly. He'd never liked the nickname they'd given him – "Pittoo." It sounded like spit. It bespoke exactly what the goddess thought of him, at least at first – that he was something to be cast-off, a waste… bodily waste. Pit thought it was cute, though – he'd said as much once, how the name came off the tongue, how perky it sounded. The white angel really seemed to think of it as having more of a meaning like "Pit – 2," a "Pit – 2.0." Dark Pit knew that Pit was well-aware of the disgusting meaning of the nickname, but he seemed to choose a more positive connotation to it.

Besides, there wasn't much that Dark Pit could be named. No one had come up with anything he'd liked, especially when he felt in his heart like he was "Pit." That was the problem with being a mirror-image. He had no life or no memories of his own except for those things he'd been building recently. He had rather liked a name that an elderly human couple he'd met in his travels had given him, but he chose not to share it with anyone else. "Ravenwings" was their name. He felt that mortals had the right to keep something apart from divine meddling, even if it was just a name for a random strange creature such as himself.

"Pittoo" smiled as he thought about it all. Of course he'd complain about being called "Pittoo" when Pit inevitably greeted him with it, but the truth was that he didn't mind him using it. Someone burning up his wings for him earned that one the right to call him by whatever name he wanted. This was why he didn't try to kick Pit in the face every time he said it.

Dark Pit passed some time by sneaking up on patrolling Centurions – the ones that were not aiding Pit in his latest mission. He used stealth and speed to affix "Kick Me" signs to the backs of two of the senior officers and watched the chaos ensue among the ranks. After laughing at that for a while, he headed to the bath house.

He stripped down just to his shorts – he really didn't trust this place enough to truly "breathe deep and remove his pants" – and slipped into the water. Just as he was letting his muscles relax, in stumbled a drenched and sneezing Pit – a little bit of greenery stuck in his golden laurels. Pit didn't seem to notice him from the far side of the room. The boy unceremoniously dumped his wet toga on the floor and quickly peeled off his under-clothing.

"Gah! No! Stop! Right now!" Dark Pit yelped, holding up his arms in a warding-gesture.

"Oh! Pittoo! You're here!" Pit exclaimed. "I didn't see you there! I'm sorry! I…Uh…"

As Dark Pit closed his eyes and turned his face away, he heard a loud splash and felt its spray. He cautiously looked to the other side of the spring to see a grinning Pit, his hair and tops of his wings dripping with fresh water, up to his shoulders in the murky divine-golden soup.

"It-it's okay now," he said, his face remaining a nice shade of cherry. "You can't see anything now… I hope."

"Eh, we've got the same stuff, anyway," Dark Pit said, "So, I would hope. It's just… your timing, Pit. I was having a very nice soak and in you come, just splashing in like you own the place…"

"I do own the place. This is my personal hot spring."

"Whatever."

"So, what brings you here, Pittoo?"

"Do you have to use that name?" – Good natured, fake grousing – "I came to see you. I just wanted to, you know… hang out or something. Viridi's place gets boring. You know, dirt, dirt… more dirt…Trees…"

"Well, she is the Goddess of the Earth!"

"Tell me about it. Half of what I do is sort her recycling!"

"Aw, you sound lonely."

"Uh…no! I mean…" Dark Pit folded his arms in front of his chest and made it look like he was resting them on the surface of the water. "I mean… I've gotta keep tabs on you, right? If you go and do something dumb and get yourself killed…Remember, no you, no me."

"Aw, Pittoo! That's so sweet!" Pit cooed. Dark Pit winced. "But you know that might not be, right? I mean, you didn't keel over when my wings were burned up."

"I still have to make sure you don't do another fool thing again like get trapped in a ring! Trust me, that was awful!"

"I know first hand! Achoo!"

"Oh, wipe your nose, Pit! You've got snot dribbling right out of it!"

Pit sniffed and found a spare towel. "Yeah… I guess I got a little cold. Lady Palutena sent me on a shortcut through a swamp today. I kind of… ran into a cluster of trees…"

"… and fell right in?" Dark Pit said with a smirk.

"How'd you guess?"

"Take a look at your laurel-crown. You got a little something riding on it."

"Huh?" Pit looked to the side of the bath and picked up his crown to find slimy weeds on it. He pulled them off, stuck his tongue out and flung them away. "Oh, super-gross!"

Dark Pit chuckled softly. "Yeah. You must have taken a real header."

"Tell me about it! I think I swallowed swamp water."

The two angels bathed and preened their feathers in silence. Dark Pit noticed that Pit seemed to be sitting low in the water in a way that was more than just a relaxed pose. His eyelids were drooping and he appeared to be a little bit pale.

"You look tired," he said, "Maybe you should go to bed."

Pit sneezed again. "Aw, but you just got here."

"Well, you get into bed and we can play Super Smash Bros. in your room or something."

"Alright – as long as I get to be Mario!"

"Get dressed. I'll come in after you."

Dark Pit turned his face away and waited for Pit to summon a Centurion with fresh clothing. After this, he dried off and before following Pit, he checked up on that Centurion patrol unit he'd messed with.

Yep, they were still grunting, cursing and kicking each other. Pittoo smiled wickedly, happy that he'd decided to break his routine and "come home."

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_


	2. Progress and Regress

_**Note:**_ _Illnesses and conditions in this story are entirely fictional – pulled right out of the butt. Please don't read too much science into this. The Rule of Drama has been invoked. The one bit of accuracy comes from a time when I had a severe problem with one of my kidneys, insomuch as I can remember what that felt like._

 _I also apologize for taking such a long time to get this up. I had a lot of bad-timing financial difficulties and lost my Internet for a while. This happens sometimes, which is why, if you like my stuff, wish to support me a little and have some spare change, you should look up a fantasy book called "A World of Rusted Dreams" on Amazon Kindle-e-books and support my real-writing by buying a copy and telling your friends (but only do the latter if you read it and like it). If you like my fan fiction, chances are, you'll like my "real" stuff._

* * *

 **ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 2: Progress and Regress**

Pittoo did not answer the call to return to Viridi. If he wanted to stay on Skyworld, she could not make him return. Viridi allowed him to do as he wished – so long as he did not care about flying. She hadn't created him. He wasn't hers.

Pit's cold progressed over the course of a week. In fact, it started showing signs of being something worse than a cold. There were no pressing missions for him, but Palutena remained busy overseeing various aspects of her domains. This meant that if Pit was to be comfortable and free of boredom, he needed a caring brother to look after him. Dark Pit wondered just how the job had defaulted to him. Bringing Pit cups of water and cold compresses wasn't too hard. It became a good chance for them to get to know each other. There hadn't been much to Dark Pit's life so far, given how technically young he was. He'd wanted to know about Pit – what the life of the "original" had been like - and with Pit ill and not running around all over the place for missions, fighting tournaments and whatever else kept him busy – Pittoo had a captive audience for all of his inquires.

This did not mean that there weren't things about Dark Pit to be learned.

"Pittoo – you read?" Pit asked between coughs as Dark Pit brought a book from Palutena's library to his bedside.

"A little," Dark Pit answered. "I had someone teach me some, but mostly I've kind of taught myself. It's pretty hard to do stuff around the towns out there when you can't understand the signs. Some of it seems to come…naturally… if that makes any sense."

Pit coughed again softly and edged himself up in bed, fluffing the pillows beneath his back. He curled his white wings around himself as tight as he could press them. "I've been trying to learn a little… when Lady Palutena has time to help me. I don't have any problems understanding signs most of the time - Lady Palutena kind of sends that information directly to my brain. Hey! Maybe that's why it comes so naturally for you!"

"I suppose so, some kind of… residue… or something…but I don't have her helping me. I don't need her help! Or anyone's!"

"I've been meaning to learn how to read on my own for a while now," Pit explained. "It's just with taking care of the world, I never had any time. It just made sense for her to do that for me."

"You're too dependent on her," Dark Pit complained as he opened the book and blew out the dust – well away from his sniffling twin. "And lazy."

"Hey!"

"Maybe I can help you in your lessons. This one's written in the common language."

"Okay, Pittoo."

"Hmmm," Dark Pit said, thumbing through the title-pages for short stories. He's picked up a compilation and was looking for something written in an easy enough style for him to understand, let alone Pit. "Ooh, one with pictures!"

"This isn't a book about us, is it?"

"Come again?"

"Lady Palutena says that the humans like to write stories about the gods. They also like to write about angels and heroes… and…and! She says that some of them have been writing about me and you since we saved everyone from Hades." Pit then got a dark and dour look. "She says that a lot of the stories aren't very good and that they do…weird things."

"Like what weird things?" Dark Pit said with a low growl, his red eyes narrowing as he contemplated the pages of the tome in his hands.

"She wouldn't tell me!" Pit whined. "Something about corrupting my innocence! Though she said she saw this one where I turned into a cat! She said that there was another one where some girl had us locked up in a basement and was torturing us with weird stories and threatening to 'Sue' us or something."

"I don't think this one is about us at all. Ah! This seems to be about some really strong half-god and his many feats. See the illustration?"

"Looks kind of like Magnus… if he wore a lion-skin." Pit pointed at the page and gave his brother a slightly confused look. "It's kind of hard for me to even see the words on this half of the page… I've been feeling dizzy and like everything's blurry out of my right eye."

"Weird," Pittoo assessed. "Maybe you just need to dab it, it's got a little too much snot. It does look a little cloudy."

The two angels slowly read the tale of labors until Pit fell asleep. Dark Pit noticed that he'd been sleeping a lot lately over the last few days. It seemed like it was more than the typical sniffles-sufferer should be sleeping. Then again, Pittoo did not know until recently that angels could even get sick. He supposed it was a side-effect of being a physical kind of angel. He'd heard rumors that in other universes and worlds, divine messengers and servants were supposed to be made of energy or light or something else he didn't care about. He and Pit and even the Centurions were more resilient than humans – well, maybe not the Centurions… they could go down with one solid it from a monster and he'd seen some mortals take more. All the same, Pit being as sniffly and sneezey as a human with a virus just struck him as strange – especially over the course of a week. He should be up and "still kickin!" by now.

At least whatever it was didn't seem to be contagious.

* * *

Dark Pit spent the first two nights of his visit in Skyworld sleeping outside. He took to finding a patch of garden-grass or gathering some blankets to make a comfortable place on the outdoor tile and sleeping under the stars. He was accustomed to being out in the fresh air – both at Viridi's temple and during his wandering-days. He opposed all that which was fancy and fluffy…

… Until he encountered Pit's pillow-collection. Pit slept with piles of fluffy pillows, particularly ones that were cute – little puffy ones, ones filled with his own cast-off under-feathers, one that looked like a cartoon-star. They smelled nice, too, sweet and fresh like the wind, itself, if that could be described as a fragrance. Pittoo, perhaps because of whom he was derived from, could not resist the charms of a fat pillow upon which to lay his head as he slept in a cot in Pit's room.

He'd found the old Palutena's Army-cot in one of the supply shelters on the main island. He dragged it into Pit's quarters and set it up perpendicular to the edge of Pit's bed so that they slept with their heads nearly touching. Dark Pit had decided that he wanted to sleep near to his brother out of a sense of paranoia. He worried about how unwell Pit seemed to be. The original's breathing had gotten to a point where it seemed to hitch every once in a while. Pittoo said he'd be damned to Hades if he wasn't there to shake Pit awake or to try to pound some breath into him if something were to go terribly wrong. He didn't trust Palutena to be timely, he guessed. Maybe it was just that he'd had a sense of dread hover over him and had a sense that it was a part of their "twin connection."

Pittoo felt an unspoken foreboding – like what he guessed must be the feeling that a dying animal has just before the end.

It was when he decided to take Pit for a short walk and some fresh air that severity of the white angel's situation hit him.

"Wait up!" Pit called to him. "I'm so tired… I don't think I can walk that fast."

"We're just going to the south garden," Dark Pit said. "It's not far. Looks like the fresh air is already doing you some goo-"

Pit had been leaning on a staff to help him walk – not one of his weapons grade pieces, but a de-natured Somewhat Staff that curiously blinked at him every once in a while. The staff clattered on the tile and Pit fell to his knees. The white-winged angel was quickly on his side, on the ground, winching and clutching his arms around his sides.

"Pit! What's going on?" Dark Pit questioned as he jogged up to him. He knelt beside his brother.

"My sides hurt…" Pit tried to explain. "They just… suddenly… started throbbing. My back, too. I mean, they started hurting a little yesterday, but… not like this."

"LADY PALUTENA!" Dark Pit called out.

Pit smiled at him. "Hey," he said, "You used her proper title."

The goddess could be seen hiking up her skirt and running to the scene. "Oh, Pit!" she cried. "What did you do to him, Dark Pit?"

"Not a thing!" Dark said as he held up his hands. "We were getting some fresh air and he just fell down and started doing this!"

"Alright, Pit… its back inside for you I'm afraid," the goddess said as she gently picked him up. Her hands shone with white light, which she transferred into Pit's small body. He relaxed.

"Thanks," he said.

"You're feeling better?" his brother asked.

"A little," Pit said as Palutena marched into his room and laid him back into his fancy bed full of soft pillows.

"I need to examine you," she said. "This is clearly more than just a cold."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Dark Pit grumbled, rolling his eyes. "He shouldn't have been sniffling for this long… and he's weak! Really weak! If I wanted to kick his tail, that'd be great for me, but…now…"

"You're being a good brother, Pittoo," Palutena told him.

"As if! Remember, if something happens to him, something happens to me."

"Oh, I think it's more than that," Palutena said brightly. "It's obvious that you care about him, maybe even as much as he cares about you."

"I don't like having debts," Dark Pit explained. "He burned up his wings to save my life."

"You paid that debt by saving his."

"It's true, Pittoo," Pit said from his bed. Palutena was in the process of gingerly stripping the clothing from his upper half.

"I… still want to stick around, okay?" Dark Pit said. "You need your privacy. I'll step out."

"You don't have to go," Pit assured him.

"I think I'd rather not stick around for too much… medical stuff."

With that, he was out of the bedroom with a flash of black wings.

"Now," Palutena said to her servant, "I'm going to be pressing on your abdomen a little… tell me if it hurts."

"Ow!"

"Okay, we have confirmation of agony. Alright, now, I'm going to be sending a little bit of light into you to assess what's wrong. Pit… this looks like it's going to be different than when you get hurt on missions…. It may sting a little…"

"Well, I'm not finished, right?"

"Not yet."

"Good. I get tired of being called a weakling."

Dark Pit listened outside the door, firmly turned around, not wanting to see the goddess do weird things to his twin's thin little body. He hadn't been sick for very long, but Pit was already starting to lose muscle. Pittoo could tell, because it was easy to compare the girth of his own arm to his brother's. It used to be the other way around – they were, save for coloration and differing minds, exact copies of one another when the Mirror of Truth had been shattered. When Dark Pit had taken to wandering to figure himself out, he hadn't eaten the Skyworld-diet. He'd fended for himself out in the wide world and he'd lost some mass as a result.

He'd been eating much better lately – fresh vegetables and wild game at Viridi's. The Goddess of Nature, wasn't, as many mortals assumed, a vegetarian. Nature was quite a brutal thing in regards to the endless dance of predator and prey and, as a goddess, Viridi took her share of her own domain for herself and divine servants in her employ. When at Skyworld, he ate the kind of things that Pit ate – except, lately, Pit hadn't been able to keep down much more than soup. Pittoo felt bad eating hamburgers in front of him, but not bad enough to not do it.

Palutena brushed past Dark Pit in the doorway. "If you can keep watching him, I'd like to call Viridi up here."

"Viridi!" Dark Pit choked in a mini-panic. "Do you actually want her to kill me?"

"No," the Goddess of Light laughed, "I'll protect you if it comes down to it. You know, you really shouldn't have taken up work with her in the first place if you were so afraid of her."

"I'm not afraid. She's annoying!"

"Even so, I need her to take a quick look at Pit for me. I suspect what he has is a matter of her domain."

"What's he got?"

Lady Palutena put her finger to her chin. "I think he picked up something in the swamp… when we were doing the last mission. He got dunked right in it and I know that the humans see it as a forbidden swamp."

"Something in the swamp water?"

"Possibly. All I know is that it's not any cold or virus I know about. His kidneys aren't doing too well."

"The pain in his sides and back?"

"Yeah… His lungs seem to be glutted up with all kinds of junk. I kind of scanned him… Pit's liver seems off, as well. And his eye… It's all filmy. He says he can't see out of it."

"Oh, this is bad," Dark Pit said. "You're his goddess. Heal him. You do it all the time."

"Giving me angry looks isn't going to do anything, Pittoo."

"Stop calling me that! You don't have the right to call me that!" Dark Pit paced, flaring out his wings like an angry crow.

"Nothing I've been trying is doing anything but easing his pain and buying some time. I need to have Viridi look at him – I think she might know what's going on and she may be able to help."

"She'd better!" Dark Pit growled.

"If it's any consolation…" Palutena began, "I think you and Pit are separate enough, your souls, I mean – you feel a bit different to me now when I am around you. I think you'll live if … even if he doesn't."

"What does it matter?" Dark Pit yelped. He looked the much taller goddess straight in the face and pointed at her. "He is going to survive. Pit will live. You will make it happen."

With that, he stormed back into Pit's room and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_


	3. Sacrificial Black Sheep

**ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 3: Sacrificial Black Sheep**

Dark Pit gazed off past the edge of Skyworld's main island, Palutena's Temple behind him and the open sky before him, dotted with the other islands. The sun shone so bright here. It wasn't particularly hot out, but his black wings had a way of absorbing heat. The sheen off the clouds made his eyes hurt. High-altitude light was really more in the element of Light's goddess and of his counterpart. Pittoo preferred a shady forest or the starry night.

Maybe that was one of the reasons why he'd taken up work with Viridi. He liked her shadow-dabbled forests and thought they were worth keeping safe from the stray Underworld troops he got to kick in the face. He didn't care about the "exterminate all humans" agenda at all, though it was fun to frighten loggers and poachers. He had this whole "Black-Winged Angel of Death" spiel that was just hilarious. He loved the looks on their faces and their screams as the turned-tail and run.

He hadn't preformed it for Pit yet, though he was sure he'd get a kick out of it.

Dark was out here for the time being idly figuring out how he might be able to get down to the surface-world on his own, perhaps through the use of friendly or gullible centurions. He didn't want to bother the pair of chatty, annoying goddesses who were making an assessment of Pit. He wasn't really much for being in the room, in the way, hearing him whine and yelp while being poked and prodded. If Viridi was taking a look at him, Pittoo knew that she'd probably wind up hurting him a lot. As much as she cared for his white-winged twin, she was exactly the gentle-type. After a couple of hours of standing around, without much to do but look at the sky and cogitate alternate plans for independence, he wandered back to Pit's chambers. Sure enough, Palutena and Viridi were standing outside, talking quietly with each other.

Viridi looked up at Dark Pit's approach. "Oh, and speaking of parasites!" she said quite casually.

"What is it, Viridi?" Dark asked, narrowing his eyes, giving her the most bored look possible. He'd grown all too accustomed to her jabs.

"Oh, Dark Pit," Palutena said gently, "We were waiting for you to come back. I would like your help."

"My help? The Great Palutena is asking for my help? From a lowly…what did Viridi just call me? A parasite?"

"You know I was just ribbing you, Pittoo," Viridi groused. Dark Pit frowned. She had not earned the "right" to use his nickname, but used it as often as possible.

"Pit is going to need your help," Palutena explained. "Viridi has concluded that he is suffering a kind of parasitic infection."

"He got it from the swamp, didn't he?" Dark Pit asked. "You couldn't find a way around it."

Palutena winced. "Y-yes," she said.

"Well, how bad is it?" Dark Pit asked pointedly.

"Well… I can't say I know much about angels," Viridi said, "But what Pit's got has been known to kill humans pretty quickly. You two are a lot like humans – but better. His body seems to be quite resilient."

"He has something in him that's traveling through his blood and attacking several organs," Palutena sighed. "It's even gotten into his right eye. Viridi has given him an herb that's supposed to purge him of it."

"Like I said," Viridi explained, "I'm not entirely sure how it will work on an angel, but if it's anything like how it operates with typical mammals, it should destroy the parasitic microbes and get them out of his system."

"What do you mean by a purge?" Dark Pit asked. "Is he going to be alright?"

Viridi shot Pittoo a wicked smile. "He'll be lucky if he has any bones left. In the next twenty-four hours, once what I gave him kicks in, Pit is going to need some massive moral support. Also a bucket. And a mop. Maybe a hose!"

"Wonderful…" Dark Pit said, rolling his eyes.

"Pit is strong," Palutena added. "But I think he'll need both of us to watch him today."

"Well, have fun!" Viridi snarked as she started walking away. "The Earth needs me, so I'll be off!" With that, she vanished in a flurry of spectral flower petals.

The sound of Pit moaning brought both Pittoo and Palutena to attention. They were quickly by his side with a bucket and a cold compress. The two assured the very ill boy that he was on his way to getting better. Dark Pit reminded him that he'd survived worse. Palutena sat beside him on his bed and rubbed that special place between his wings that always helped him feel just a little bit better.

"When does the throwing up stop?" Pit asked in a voice that broke his goddess' heart just a little.

"Soon," Pittoo assured. "I mean… geeez… you shouldn't have anything in you anymore. I didn't think you ate that much."

"It's just the black sludge now," Palutena said. "Viridi said to watch for that. It should mean he's in the clear."

Just as she'd said that, Pit passed out. Pittoo took him to the hot spring while the Goddess of Light was left to use her divine powers to clean up the room. After Dark Pit brought Pit back to his bed, he settled down in his own cot and held Pit's hand all night.

* * *

The coming days did not see Pit getting much better. Viridi came back to confirm the success of the purge, however the infection had already done significant damage to the young angel.

"He can't see out of his right eye," Dark Pit said to Palutena while Pit was sleeping away the morning.

"He's never been this late a sleeper before, either," Palutena replied. "He was always a bit lazy about getting out of bed, but he's so weak. I haven't seen him this weak since…"

"He burnt up his wings…" Pittoo finished for her. The goddess nodded. It was a horrible memory for the both of them. Palutena had been finally liberated only to see Pit nearly kill himself. She'd gathered him into her lap, burned, bruised and scraped – his once soft white wings reduced to shards of bloody charred bone. For the first time in her immortal life, she experienced the fear shared by mortal mothers. Hers was a stranger feeling, however, being that her "son" was both her bodyguard and chief worshipper. Grief was the price of love, she knew. Sometimes, she regretted developing such an attachment to a single servant of hers, but, in the end, she found that the price was worth it.

For Dark Pit, the memory was permeated by guilt. He was glad that Pit had chosen to save him. At the time, he was desperate, calling out for survival. He'd only begun to live and he was about to be murdered by semi-sentient ash and probably have his soul devoured by it, too. He did not wish to be unmade again. Still, after all this time in his mind, he could see Pit jump and dive for him as clearly as the moment it happened. He watched the boy become a streak of fire in the sky. One of Pit's large hands reached for his own. Pit had gripped onto his body and the last thing Dark Pit had seen before the beam of divine light had taken them was twin plumes of fire, feathers going up in sparks and exposed bones. There was a stench, too, that was overpowering – like meat left in a cooking pan for too long. All Pittoo could think about that day was how if he'd only been watching his surroundings better and if he hadn't trusted stupid monsters to stay damn-dead it wouldn't' have happened.

He'd taken to double-tapping after that…

It was, if anything positive could be gleaned from that horror, the day when Dark Pit realized that someone in this game of existence he'd been unwittingly brought into cared about him. If Pit was the only person in the universe that did that – it was enough.

"Do you know the extent of the damage?" Pittoo asked.

"It's hard to tell without…" Palutena hesitated, "You know, cutting him open."

"Well, we're not doing that!" Dark Pit protested. "Uh… are we?"

"No," Palutena said with a gentle shake of her head. "From what I can read from his body, several vital organs are having trouble. His kidneys aren't right. The liver doesn't seem to be doing too hot, either. His lungs… you've heard him coughing. His heartbeat has been off… I've been trying to correct it. His heart is weakening."

"And the eye," Dark Pit said. "Pit thinks eye-patches are cool and said he could be a pirate." At this, Pittoo smiled, "But I don't think he knows how bad it is."

"Leave Pit to find a bright side," Palutena contemplated. "I fear that this may be beyond me… But I'm not going to give up."

* * *

For a space, Pit started looking like he was on the mend. Pittoo helped him outside to watch the butterflies in the gardens and to check up on his troops. He couldn't muster up enough energy for archery practice and the nausea and throbbing in his middle began again. The boy was confined to bed when his breathing became difficult.

He used to dream of flight. He started waxing nostalgic about walking around Palutena's Temple.

One morning, a squadron of centurions floated into the room when Palutena and Pittoo were trying to get Pit to eat something. They pulled back their breastplates and the squadron leader went to the floor and posed on one knee.

"We are willing to give our lives for our Captain," they announced.

"You…You don't have to do that…" Pit struggled, wearing an embarrassed smile at this.

"Why not? They're expendable, aren't they?" Dark Pit said with a shrug. "It's not like Palutena can't bring them back to life. What are they getting at, anyway?"

Palutena laughed gently. "Oh, Brutus… Stand down, your services will not be necessary, I assure you."

"Yes, Goddess," the big-nosed man said as he exited the chambers with his men.

"What was that about?" Pittoo asked.

"They must have overheard me talking with Viridi…" Palutena said slowly, "We were speaking of the possibility of organ-transplants. Short of capturing Pit's soul for a guided reincarnation, which I do not know if I will be able to do, giving him fresh, healthy organs might be the only way to save him."

"Can't you… you know…just make them?" Dark Pit asked. "You're a goddess."

"My domain is in particles and waves," Palutena said matter-of-factly. "Even Viridi and other gods that deal in physical bodies have limited capabilities. Body parts tend to be shaped by the processes of life, itself."

"Didn't you create Pit in the first place?"

"Yes and no," the goddess answered cryptically. "Angels of your caliber are… complicated." She then smiled in a way that Pittoo found utterly insufferable, "I'm actually surprised that you turned out so well coming from the Mirror of Truth!"

Dark Pit folded his arms. "I thought I was a 'flawed-clone."

"Sometimes, 'flaws' can be good," Palutena explained. "You didn't come out serving Pandora and Medusa, which was the intent for minions of the Mirror. What I mean is, Pittoo, is that I'm surprised that you haven't faded away or something by now."

Pit, who was half-asleep by now and did not indicate that he had been listening, gently reached one hand off his bed and grabbed Dark Pit's.

Palutena smiled. "I mean… it's highly irregular, but you turned out like brothers – like twins."

"I suppose so," Dark Pit said. He gazed down at his brother with small, sad smile.

He did not like how sallow Pit looked. His skin was begining to discolor, which, as little as he knew about the world so far, was something he knew to be a bad sign.

His hand was warm, at least.

* * *

The next day, Palutena was keeping a watch upon a festival in her honor in one of the human cities. She went still and stiff as she was hit with a sudden, cold feeling.

"Pit!"

She didn't even bother to run. She warped to the entrance of his room to find Pittoo hovering over him, frantically puffing air into his mouth with his own. He did a few breaths and a pause, something known as rescue-breathing when done without pumps to the chest. She wondered where the dark-feathered angel had learned that for about half a second. After that, she pushed him out of the way and ran her hands over Pit's frame. She unbuttoned his top and exposed the chest. It was not moving with breath and she did not feel a heartbeat.

That was what she'd felt in the work-area of her palace – a clenching in her heart, a stillness, and a deafening silence in her mind.

His lips were blue.

"There's no pulse!" Dark Pit yelped. He was panicking, pacing back and forth in the room since the goddess had barged her way in and prevented him from even trying to do anything.

Palutena was shaking slightly, a light-tremor. She drew in a shuddering breath as she placed one hand beneath Pit at the center of his back and the other hand over the area where his heart would be. "His soul hasn't yet left," she said. "Watch the doorway for Reapers."

"I thought they only came to mortals." Pittoo said.

"I have a job for you that you can handle…" Palutena answered as her long, slender fingers glowed. Her eyes were dull as she concentrated upon her task and, at the same time, was trying not to think about her task. "If you see any messengers of death, destroy them."

"Right."

The goddess sent a jolt of energy into her faithful servant. He remained limp. She sent in another jolt, earning a sharp breath, a weak fidget and a low moan. Palutena sighed in utter relief as she laid Pit back down. She kept one hand on his chest, sending a comforting energy into his body, hoping to mitigate any pain from the previous jolts. She also needed to feel that his heart was beating again and beating normally. Her divine touch was much more clean, pretty and reliable than anything the mortals ever did, but this was still a very different situation than bringing her guard captain back after an unfortunate battle.

Pit wearily opened his eyes. "Lady Palutena? What are you doing here? I thought you were working."

"She's here to read you a bedtime story," Dark Pit said.

"Was it a sad one?" his light-side asked. "You're crying."

"I…uh…" he struggled, embarrassed that he, quite apparently, did have a pair of wet streams running down his cheeks. "It was," he said, unsteady, "but it had a happy ending."

The dark angel hastily left to wash his face leaving the servant to his goddess and needing some moments to think, feeling utterly useless.

Palutena got Pit situated and made small talk with him that she didn't pay attention to. She glanced at his desk-clock resting on the other side of the room. Aside from Pit's whispery chatter, its gentle ticking as minutes passed was the only sound in the room.

 _Tick. Tick._

In the light goddess' mind, the soft sound became a roar.

 _Tick. His ticker gave out. Tick. You won't be able to save him next time. Tick. He is doomed. Tick. There is no time. Tick. He is running out of time._

Palutena knew that those echoes of her mind were right. There was very little time to devise a solution. Pit's body was failing and in a way that even she could not stop without taking drastic measures.

Only one solution she'd thought of had what she thought was a good chance of actually working. It was the Forbidden Solution, one she was desperate not to take. However…

 _Tick. Tick._

When Pit fell asleep again and Palutena was reasonably sure that he was going to be alright for the time being, she took his desk clock out of his chambers with her and dropped it off the nearest edge of Skyworld.

* * *

"You want WHAT?" Dark Pit yelped, standing across from Palutena inside her temple, well away from sensitive ears.

"I have tried everything!" Palutena explained. "You don't want Pit – your brother – to die, do you?"

"I never said I wanted to die, either!"

"You would be doing something incredibly noble, Pittoo."

"Don't call me that! Nobility is Pit's thing! In case you haven't noticed, I'm the DARK copy!"

"You can be noble, too, Dark Pit. I've seen it."

"I am NOT expendable!"

"I'll seal your soul, Pittoo! I promise! I'll make sure you're safe so you can pass to the next life!"

Dark Pit glared daggers at the goddess. "I want THIS life! It's all I've ever known!" He gesticulated, a hand on his chest, "I want to be MYSELF!"

Palutena was exasperated. "I need to save Pit. He… I need him, as him. It's not just for myself, but for the people, for Light."

"Do you even listen to yourself talk?" Dark Pit growled. He stood firm with his hands over his chest. "Find another way. Find a mortal willing to help, find something!"

Palutena shook her head. "I don't think there is any other way."

"Find one!"

"You know, Pittoo… I am a goddess. Most gods are not in the habit of asking for favors rather than just taking what they need."

"So, you're telling me I should be grateful that you even asked."

"Pretty much."

"Give me some time, okay?" Dark Pit asked. "I… I just need some time to come to terms with this."

"Thank you, Pittoo. I'll be waiting."

Instead of going to his "thinking area" on the main island, Dark Pit went to the weapons room. He chose one of his favored pieces, stowed it in that magical pocket-dimension that he and Pit carried things they were not using and stole over to Pit's chambers. He quietly walked over to the body on the bed. It stirred as Dark placed a hand over one of Pit's atop the blanket. Pit looked up listlessly at him through one bright blue eye and one white and blank.

"I was just having a dream about donuts…" Pit said. "I was flying… through giant donuts."

"I bet it was nice," Dark Pit said, patting his hand. "You can go back to it when I'm gone."

"Gone?"

"Yeah," Pittoo said. "I'm heading out. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Where to?"

"I'm going to go find a cure for you. I'm not going to find it here, so I need to go. I'll be back soon, okay? You just hang in there."

"Watch out for Eggplant Wizards."

"I will."

With that, Dark Pit called upon Brutus and Claudius, a pair of centurions who were excellent fliers and extra-dim to ferry him down to the surface-world.

He was going to find a way to save Pit even if it killed him. He was determined, however, to do it I his own way.

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_


	4. Sea of Blue, Sea of Red

_**Notes:**_ _Both authors are aware of some of the out of character nature of Palutena and Viridi in this story – that the characters are stretched a bit for parts of it. We tried to make it work for the plot we had in mind, but much like Shadsie's Legend of Zelda stories that don't have much regard for the canon Timeline, we ask for just a little stretching of the imagination on the part of our readers._

* * *

 **ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 4: Sea of Blue, Sea of Red**

He was falling, chased by fire.

Pit had been through this before, many times. He knew that he was dreaming because even though he felt the heat of the fire at this back, he did not feel any pain. The control Pit had over these dreams was always limited and in this one, he'd never been able to stop himself from falling and burning. A cold fear set into his bones in contrast to his burning feathers. He could smell himself cooking. He wanted out. Pit knew that the only way out of the nightmare was to grab Pittoo.

Pit could see his black-robed counterpart before him, falling, screaming for help. As he fell closer, the wind of the Chaos Vortex whipping all around him, Dark Pit was silent, looking up, thunderstruck, confusion in his crimson eyes. Pit reached out and grabbed his hand. Chubby fingers fumbled and slipped. He grabbed again, but the same thing happened.

With a scream of abject terror, Pittoo fell faster and was lost to the hazy sea below the realm of Chaos.

Pit woke up with a start and shot up straight in bed.

"Captain!" the guardian by his bed exclaimed, "Is everything alright?"

"Galen?" Pit asked, blinking, adjusting the sight in his good eye. Light was flooding into his room from the windows, indicating that he'd slept into midday. "Where is Pittoo?" He looked about frantically, desperate to see his twin after that horrible dream. "Is Lady Palutena nearby?"

"No," the centurion knight replied. "She is presently on the surface. Dark-you left on his own business"

Pit was thoughtful for a moment. He remembered that Dark Pit had talked to him. It was vague and fuzzy, but he recalled that Pittoo had wanted to try to find a cure for him, so he didn't need to worry about the boy's welfare, since he was off doing Pittoo-things.

"The surface?" Pit asked, "What would she be doing there?"

"She is conducting a personal mission for your welfare, Captain Pit," Galen replied. "Do you require anything? Have some water."

"Thanks," Pit said, taking the proffered cup. "Do you know when she will be back?"

The soldier shook his head.

* * *

Pittoo was deep in a summer wood when Viridi caught up to him. His path was impeded by growing vines and brambles. Once his feet became stuck in a patch of mud, the earth grew up around his feet and up his legs and snaked around his arms. It sprouted rocks and diamonds in the rough, glittering in the sun. At least his prison was stylish.

"Viridi" the black-winged angel called out. He saw her as a spectral image in a sunbeam between the trees. "I'm not coming back to work with you until Pit is healed! Let me go!"

"I'm so sorry, Pittoo," she sighed. "This is for Pit. Palutena asked me to help her."

Pittoo's eyes widened in horror. He knew exactly what this meant. "Palutena!" he roared.

The Goddess of Light rode a sunbeam down before him. "Thank you, Viridi," she said, acknowledging the childlike goddess who was standing apart.

"Don't ask me to do your dirty work again!" Viridi growled. "This isn't for you, this is for Pit!"

"There has to be another way!" Dark Pit screamed. He struggled and flailed his wings, which were not covered by hardened earth and rock. "Let me find it!"

"We don't have time, Pittoo," Palutena said sadly. She stroked his cheek. He bit her.

Palutena shook her hand and healed it. "You know I cannot go to the other gods. None of them have a stake in this. Viridi is helping because she likes Pit."

"And, of course, no one likes me… the knockoff…"

"I like you, Dark Pit," Viridi said, using his proper-name. "It's just…"

"You like Pit more."

Viridi made a little squeak and turned away. "You… you're a shadow, Pittoo. You don't really have an existence apart from Pit. I… I'm so sorry."

"We will remember you forever," Palutena said, gathering light into her right hand.

"I don't want to be remembered! I want to be me!"

Palutena touched his cheek, careful, this time, not to be bitten. She sent the spell she had worked into him. He glared at her until his eyes suddenly lost their life and his eyelids drooped gently over them. His head and his puffed-up wings went limp. Viridi released the earthen prison as Palutena opened her arms to gather him. Dark Pit was in a deep sleep and would remain so. The Goddess of Light cradled him.

"I'm so sorry, Pittoo. I already regret this more than you'll ever know."

She kissed him on the forehead before teleporting back to her home beyond the clouds.

* * *

Pit had been tired of sleeping, but Palutena decided he needed some more. Promising him that he'd feel better in the morning, she "helped" him to his rest.

She worked alone, setting up twin angels on twin tables, stripped down and carefully washed. The procedure did not involve the crude implements in a hospital for mortals – not even the sophisticated ones in other worlds Palutena had been to (that is, whatever planet the Super Smash Bros. Tournament was held on). She had enough in the ways of powers to make this work, or so she hoped.

She trembled and experienced a hitch of hesitation as she touched Pittoo's gently rising and falling chest. She noticed the warmth of his skin through the tips of her fingers before she edged her divine knife over him. The goddess looked over at Pit, who was rasping even in his comatose state. She bit her lip. She choked down her emotion and got to work.

* * *

Dark Pit didn't know quite what was going on when he woke up. He was immediately alarmed when he saw Pit, prone on a table with a tight bandage wound over his eye and an opened ribcage. Was this a dream? A bad one?

That was when he noticed something, namely, himself, on another table. Why was he looking at a body that looked so much like his? Why did the right eyelid look sunken-in? There was blood on his cheek. He felt strangely unalarmed at seeing a body that looked just like his opened like a fisherman's catch. He felt disconnected from it all, as if he were watching surgery done on a wax doll that had been made in his likeness. The pulsing bothered him – that is, of what remained. It seemed like quite a bit of him had been removed.

"Hey! What in the Underworld are you doing?" he demanded as he saw Palutena's slender fingers reach into his opened chest. She made no indication of hearing him. "Oh, come on!" he demanded. "You're supposed to be the all-seeing Palutena! You can't see me? Or hear me? Come on, you dip of a goddess, stop ignoring me!"

Had she been crying? No… not had-been. She was crying. She gently lifted something out of the wax-doll Dark Pit and gingerly brought the tip of a knife to the various arteries and veins that connected it into that doll.

Pittoo immediately felt himself fading, like he was being sucked into a small space. He felt the sensation of traveling. After that, something familiar.

Everything was darkness, but it was warm.

* * *

Pit sat before a banquet.

"Really, Lady Palutena? All this is for me?"

"Eat up!" The goddess laughed, standing on the other side of the table. "I prepared this for you to celebrate your recovery! You need to eat to get strong, so clean your plates!"

"Can do!" Pit enthusiastically replied. Eating was definitely a talent that came easy to him.

"Lady Palutena?" he asked, poking at the main dish on one plate with a fork. He stuck his tongue out in an expression of confusion as well as disgust. "What's this? This meat looks weird."

"Oh, that's liver and onions," the goddess replied.

"Why did you cook this? You know I don't like liver."

"You need liver to make you strong, Pit. Are you one to argue with your goddess? Eat it."

"But…"

"I said to eat it, Pit. This is not an argument. This has the right balance of nutrients you need. You need to get better."

"Oh, alright."

Pit cut the offending slab of meat and lifted a piece of it to his mouth. He immediately dropped the fork. The liver had turned raw and quivering.

"Lady Palutena….?"

The plate of liver had vanished. The goddess offered Pit a bowl.

"Try some beans. They're full of protein and very good for you."

"Won't they make me fart?"

Pit stirred the little clay bowl of beans with a spoon. They were red and glistening – kidney beans. He liked them best in chili. At least it wasn't nasty cow-liver. Just as he raised a spoonful of musical fruit to his mouth, he paused. Why did two of them look bloody? He shook his head and the beans returned to normal. He ate them, but was still hungry.

"Try some bread," Palutena said. "It's fluffy and light as air."

Pit broke a piece of bread. He noticed, for some strange reason, all of the nooks and crannies in each half of the loaf. There were bubbly, tiny little air-pockets. Pit found himself breathing more easily than he had in a month upon eating the bread, the reason unknown. However, he stopped chewing when he noticed tiny red capillaries growing through the yeast-bubble pockets and dropped what was left.

What was going on here?

"Lady Palutena? Are you pulling a prank on me? I'd eat better if you'd stop it."

Palutena laughed that gentle, almost tinkling laugh that Pit loved so much. "This is no prank," she assured him. "This is all helping you to get strong again."

Pit moved onto the salad-course. He plucked a ripe, inviting cherry tomato out of it and held it up to eat it first. It looked back at him. The fruit became a baleful scarlet eye. It was a familiar eye, one that Pit had seen before many times. He dropped it and naught but an innocent tomato rolled upon the table.

"Do you see what she did to me, Pit-Stain?" said a deep, yet petulant voice. Pit looked up from the curious tomato to see Pittoo standing beside the table. Palutena seemed not to notice his presence as she gathered another plate for Pit. "Do you understand now?"

"Understand what, Pittoo?" Pit asked. "You should sit down and eat something too."

"I wish I could," Dark Pit said as dessert was given to Pit.

"Aw, Lady Palutena, how cute! You made me a big cookie in the shape of a heart! It looks just like the big ones I put into the Fiend's Cauldron!"

"The last of the things you need is a strong heart."

Pit blinked for split second.

The "cookie" on the plate bled and pulsed.

Dark Pit stared straight at Pit. "It's me," he said cryptically before fading away.

* * *

Pit awakened in a dark room. Everything was quiet except for Skyworld's crickets and his body registered a dull, mostly-painless throb. He felt weak, but somehow less weak than he had been feeling. Pit knew that he wasn't dead because he was in his own place, not in the Underworld or the City of Souls. He saw no Reapers.

He climbed out of bed, letting his bare feet touch the cold floor. It was nighttime. The stars were all around outside his windows and the moon was full and glorious – almost as beautiful as the Lunar Sanctum. To his surprise, Pit was able to stand up, although standing caused a shockwave of pain to shoot up through his middle and into his chest. He felt his body beneath his clean pajamas – Lady Palutena must have changed them. Everything felt okay in his pants – that was always a good thing to check – but his stomach felt bumpy and strange, like he had a zipper. He fingered up to his chest – wow, did the center of his chest ache! He felt something like hard thread, as if he'd been sewn up.

"Mirror," he mumbled to himself.

Pit staggered out of his room looking for one of the preening-halls he and the centurions used to look their best. A full-length mirror was known to be present there. He wandered slowly, careful in his steps, for he felt woozy. Pit did not know if he was still dreaming or if he was, indeed awake.

"The mausoleum's closed-off," he observed, speaking quietly to himself.

One of the buildings he walked past almost always had open-doors. The mausoleum on Skyworld wasn't a structure that saw much use, being that Skyworld was a place for immortal beings. No angel or centurion had permanently died in decades. Palutena had built it long ago mainly for heroes. If a mortal hero had done worthy deeds in life that had caught her eye and if they had been dedicated to her, she would honor them by allowing them to rest in state on Skyworld before the council of gods decided either to deify them or to commit them to the City of Souls and scatter them upon the wind. For the doors to be closed-off meant that someone had been laid inside it, awaiting a proper funeral.

Either that or it was just being cleaned or fumigated for ants.

That happened far too often, so Pit paid it little mind. The mausoleum was near one of the vegetable gardens and, even in the sky, creatures lived there and leaked themselves into places they were not meant to be.

Pit found the room he was looking for and flipped the switch to bring up the torches. The mirror was before him at the other end of the room. He approached it, opening the chest on his pajamas. He gently touched the stitching. He, indeed, had black stitches in puckered skin. The cut did not look fresh and it was not bandaged, indicating that it had taken a little time – or perhaps a little divine intervention – to heal.

"How long was I asleep?" Pit asked himself, "And what in the world happened?"

He looked up into the mirror and beheld his face. He stood still, his jaw opening. He touched the mirror, leaving greasy finger-streaks upon it. Once his hair was out of the way, he saw that his eyes were wrong. He could see out of both of them and he strangely hadn't registered this tidbit until now, probably because he was used to seeing with both eyes and had only recently had problems with one. He also saw clearly in his dreams and he thought that he might be dreaming.

One of his eyes didn't belong to him.

Staring back at Pit was one sea of blue and one sea of red.

* * *

 _ **Told you this was horror.**_

 _ **To be continued…**_


	5. Derivative, Divided, Derelict

**ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 5: Derivative, Divided, Derelict**

Pit stared at his reflection in the mirror for several minutes. He then got a strong feeling that set him wandering back outside.

" _Go to the mausoleum,"_ an inner voice told him. It wasn't like Lady Palutena's voice in his head when he went on missions. It was his inaudible inner-voice, yet it felt different in a subtle way.

Pit wandered toward the closed-off building.

" _Go and see what she did to me!"_

Pit shivered. Yes, that was him-but-not-him. It felt like the way Pittoo spoke even though he could not hear it. Pit looked around and saw no guards – perhaps it was the time of night. One of the thick doors had been left open a crack. The young angel carefully pushed it open enough so that he could get inside. He saw that the altar in the center ring had a figure on it, covered with a sheet. The light was dim, but there were lit magical torches ringing the walls, painting everything in an eerie pale blue light. Pit approached the altar, trembling in fear.

"This is just a dream," he told himself. "Please, let this be a dream…"

He pulled the top of the sheet back to see the ash-pale skin of a familiar face.

"No," Pit whispered, his throat suddenly dry and his entire body suddenly frigid. "Pittoo…"

Pit stroked his brother's face. The skin felt like clay over cold meat. The white-winged angel trembled, not quite able to get his fingers to work properly, nor to believe what they felt. The right eyelid looked a little off, like it was a little…lumpy? Out of curiosity, Pit gently picked at the eyelid's edge, running a finger along the eyelashes. He was dull and deliberate, feeling like he was outside of himself somehow. Something in his brain was trying to convince him that he was only touching some weird doll.

He managed to pry it loose to see gauze the color of rusty wine. He jumped like a cat. He went back to this strange thing, unable to keep himself away from something so utterly horrible, yet fascinating. From what he could see, it looked like it had been packed there for cosmetic reasons, to replace what wasn't there to give Dark Pit's face the illusion of sleep. Pit pulled the sheet back further, to Pittoo's middle. His hands had been arranged to clutch his favorite sniping-staff over his chest. Taking in a shuddering breath, Pit gently pried back some of his brother's toga to find stitches in his chest that matched his own. He placed everything back, leaving the sheet over the body's center. Dark Pit's wings were tucked up under his back neatly. A few soft, tiny feathers had fallen to the floor.

"What happened?" Pit asked the corpse, squeaking out the request in a hoarse whisper. His hand traveled to one of the rigid shoulders. He leaned over the body, small sobs beginning to well up in his chest. His legs failed him and his knees buckled. All he could do was to kneel before the altar and the sacrifice upon it.

Sunlight streamed into the doorway and in from the skylight. Dainty footsteps entered.

"Pit," Palutena said softly. "You… you shouldn't be out of bed."

She had sensed something amiss and had come here right away, fearing the scene that she witnessing. She listened to Pit's soft, dry weeping. It was as though he was too exhausted to muster much of a voice or tears. She stepped up behind him and gently stroked his wings.

"Sssh… shhh… Pit…"

Pit didn't look up from his hunched over position. "What happened, Lady Palutena?"

Palutena bit her lip. "I'm so sorry, Pit," she said, coaxing him to straighten up and to look at her. "Pittoo… he… he died in battle," she lied, hoping that Pit would not see through it.

"He was trying to find a cure for me."

"Yes, Pit," the goddesses said; stroking his back and letting him hug her. "He… died doing that. Since your body was so damaged, I used his to repair yours. He was your twin and derived from you, so he was a perfect match."

"The stitches?" Pit choked, trying to gulp down a blob of snot in throat, "A-and the eye?"

"Yes," Palutena replied. "Dark Pit saved you. It just wasn't in the way that he was expecting. You should thank him."

"Lady Palutena? Do you… do you know where his soul is?"

Pit turned back to Dark Pit's corpse on the table. Palutena sighed. "No… I tried to capture it, to keep it safe, but I didn't get to it in time."

Pit shot a glare at her. "I should go to the Underworld, then! Maybe we can find it! We can make sure he's okay!"

"No, Pit. You're far too weak for that. Besides I… I have a sense that he's still around in some way. I can't articulate what way, but I don't think he's been eaten or anything. I just don't feel… the absence that I would feel…"

"Pittoo was always stubborn."

"Yes, he was."

Pit started sobbing again. Palutena pulled him back gently and covered Dark Pit up.

"You should rest," the goddess said. "I'll walk you back to your room. I'll even help you to sleep if you'd like."

Pit just gave her a dull look.

"Remember, Pit. Part of him lives in you now and will forever. You can say, in a way…" she bit her lip again, "You two are once again one."

"If you say so, Lady Palutena."

"Every beat of your heart now is his heart – as in, actually his heart. I am just glad… that I did not lose both of you."

Pit hiccupped and twitched. Suddenly, he started running. He cried out a pure animal-howl of distress as he pumped his legs, headed for some unknown part of the main island. The goddess called some of the centurions to watch Pit to make sure he didn't blindly run off the edges of their small world. She also asked them to gather him up as soon as he grew too exhausted to fight back and to put him to bed. She could not blame her little white-winged boy for wanting to run and hide from this. She'd been trying to figure out just how to wake him up to these layers of heavy news. Palutena had not counted on him waking up and making the discovery of the bitter truth himself.

And, of course there were certain details she was going to keep to herself. She already regretted what had happened. She kept telling herself over and over that there was no other way and that her poor little Pittoo would have faded away if Pit had. She was not so sure of that. She had been warming to Dark Pit and was even beginning to consider him as a second "son," but Pit… she absolutely needed Pit. Pit was her heart. Also, it was for the good of the people on the surface – for the good of Light.

So, why did she feel like joining Pit in random running and hiding and trying to make it all go away?

She looked behind her as she closed the mausoleum doors. Time would heal Pit. Hopefully, it would heal her, too.

* * *

Pit was soaring without limit – not too close to the sun or too close to the sea. He was moving among the outer islands of Skyworld, brushing the clouds and letting little ice crystals form on the tips of his fingers.

If he had not been dreaming, he would have been aware that something was amiss – namely, that he was flying without the help of Lady Palutena. As it was, Pit thought this was perfectly normal. Not even the winged hippopotamus that casually fluttered by exactly shook him into realizing that he was not in reality.

As the young angel spiraled down toward an island, something caught his eye. There was a black humanoid form curled up on the ground – someone wearing black robes was doubled over in pain. As he drew closer, Pit recognized this figure immediately.

"Pittoo!" he cried as he landed and ran to him, coming to his knees. "Pittoo…"

As Pit touched his brother's shoulder, Dark Pit looked up at him with one eye the color of blood and one bleeding eye-socket.

"I…I'm finished, Pit," he trembled.

"No, no, no you're not! We can fix this!" Pit insisted. Dark Pit slightly uncurled himself. Pit saw a pool and streaks of blood beneath him. It looked as though Pittoo was trying to hold his own body together after having taken a devastating wound.

"What happened?" Pit asked desperately, yelling it out. "What did this to you?"

"The light…" Dark Pit choked out.

"The light?" Pit asked. "What light?" He looked around.

"She…" Dark Pit whispered. "She killed me to save you…"

"I don't understand, Pittoo…"

"I'm just one black feather, taken for your perfection…" the dark-robed angel whispered before vanishing like smoke. The ground where Pittoo had lain was not empty, however, and Pit jumped to his feet. Upon the ground was a series of organs. The blood had disappeared, leaving them glistening, but rubbery-looking. There was what looked like a liver, a pair of kidneys, lungs and a heart.

Pit felt compelled to reach down and to pick up the heart. He held it in his hands as it listlessly pumped. The other body parts turned into smoke and disappeared. As Pit stared at the carefully cradled heart it shifted like clay into the form of a person.

The angel's jaw hung as he beheld a tiny Pittoo, curled up in his palms as if sleeping in safety. The little black-winged angel stood up and gave him a trademark smirk.

"Pittoo…"

"Yes, Pit?" Dark Pit asked.

"What is going on?"

"I guess we're stuck together again," Dark Pit sighed. "I didn't want it this way. I liked being my own person."

"What do you mean? You are your own person! No matter what anyone says!"

"Not anymore, Pit," the little twin said, shaking his head. "I was just a shadow that you cast…" He looked down and toed his boot against the skin of one of Pit's palms. "She cut me up to keep you going."

"She? She who?"

"You know who. Your derelict goddess."

"Yeah, but… Pittoo… she said…" it suddenly dawned upon Pit that Dark Pit was dead. He was holding a tiny version of him that had sprang from his heart, but he shouldn't have been talking to him. He was dead.

"Do you realize now?" Dark Pit asked.

"Lady Palutena said that she had to use you to save me after you died in battle."

"In battle? Pheh!" Pittoo spat. "It was more like a trapped animal! She killed me, Pit! She captured me, cut me open and put my working parts in you!"

Pit shook his head adamantly. "Lady Palutena would never do something like that! She's good!"

"How good is she?" the little Dark Pit said with a pin-prick stare. "She's always cared about her own needs above anything else – like, well, like me… and like anything else in the world. She wanted you, not me. Nothing is too good for her original! No sacrifice will be spared for the light-half!"

"Pittoo…"

"Please, Pit. You should know the truth, at least. I don't think you should be kept in the dark. Listen to her when she talks, Pit. Can you do that for me?"

"I can…I can try," Pit answered. There were tears in his eyes. Realizing that Dark Pit was dead was making him cry, even though he was talking with him.

Dark Pit paced and looked thoughtful for a moment. "She told you I died in battle, huh? I suppose that's sweet, letting you think of me as a hero of some sort. Look at my wounds, Pit, if you get the chance. Is there anything that shows a fight? You know me, I would have been all kinds of scraped up, determined to get the best of whatever I was up against."

"Okay," Pit said numbly.

"Now put your hands against your heart. That's where I live now… though 'live' might not be the best word for it."

Pit did so, very gently.

After that, he woke up. Pit was in his own bed in his dress-clothes, but without his crown and bucklers – just the loose, un-belted toga. His muscles were stiff and the pillows were wet. Had he wept himself to sleep? It would seem like it, but from the way he felt, he guessed that he must have been curled up - Yeah… he was curled up rocking himself on a stone pavement, his back against a marble column the last he remembered anything and even that was hazy – like watching something through water. Had he passed out only to be brought here by Lady Palutena or some of his men? Probably. Had he been dressed? The last day or so was foggy… He'd probably dressed to do some kind of formal ritual for Pittoo, then went back to curling up somewhere.

He was safe. He stretched out and looked at the ceiling of his room.

He was awake.

Pittoo was still dead.

* * *

"I want a statue!" Pit declared. "A big one made of black marble of Pittoo holding his staff out, ready to kick tail!"

"What brought this on? Palutena asked.

Pit pressed the tips of his index fingers together and shrugged his wings. "Well, you have a statue, Lady Palutena."

"I am a goddess. It is customary for us to have idols."

"The humans make statues of people who aren't gods all the time! Important people… to honor them! Usually heroes! Warriors… uh… peacemakers, too!"

"Oh, alright," Palutena laughed. "We can make one and I'll have to find the marble... and the proper artists…"

"Oh, thank you, Lady Palutena!"

"If it will help you, Pit," the goddess said, "I'll do anything."

"I really think it would honor him."

"I can try to capture some of his personality in it, too," the goddess playfully said. "Maybe with the right magic I can get it to move on its own on occasion… flash you a smirk every once in a while."

"I don't know about that, Lady Palutena. Isn't that a little… creepy?"

She laughed. "We can set it up near the resting place I've made for him."

"Resting place?" Pit asked. "We aren't… scattering him on the wind?"

"No," Palutena said, gently shaking her head. "I've made a stone tomb for him. I will seal him in. I don't think I can stand watching him undergo the usual treatment."

This was, in part, true – the Goddess of Light really did not want to supervise a pyre-burning of someone so close to her and she would be required to do just that. The flames consuming those handsome black feathers and licking at the limbs of a boy who was, essentially – her Pit by half was more than she wanted to watch. Doing what was unconventional in their world and laying him in stone just seemed a much nicer way of dealing with the issue. Palutena also had put a preserving spell upon the dead boy. It did not get rid of all of the rigor, but it meant that if anything at all went amiss with Pit and she needed to do anymore "harvesting," the option was open to her.

"Isn't a spirit freed by someone's ashes being scattered on the wind?" Pit insisted.

"Don't worry about it, Pit,' the goddess sighed. "He is already free."

They walked down to one of the courtyards where others were awaiting them.

What passed for a funeral service in Skyworld that day was paltry. The turnout was painfully small. There was Palutena and Pit. There were the centurions. Viridi chose to come "for Pit's sake," and was accompanied by Arlon and Phosphora. Dyntos showed up for a quick nod. Offers to create a "pseudo-Dark Pit" to keep Palutena's "poor little chicken" company were soundly rejected, with great offense. Dark Pit had not been a particularly bad person during his short life; however, the sad fact of the matter was that he did not have a lot of friends. Any friends he might have made among the humans were unknown among the Pantheon and couldn't have come here, anyway. Many of the gods and their servants, if they knew of Dark Pit at all, considered copies of his nature expendable. There was even some debate that Palutena had been made aware of that she carefully guarded from Pit over whether or not a clone had a soul.

"Well, the heterochromia is weird," Viridi said to Palutena concerning Pit's differently-colored eyes.

"Yeah," Palutena sighed as they watched Pit from some paces away. "I'll always have a reminder that he was once divided into two."

"Are you sure you should let him touch the body like that? He might catch something and it's a little creepy."

"I am letting Pit say goodbye," Palutena explained. "I told him that he could take a black feather from Pittoo or something else of his, like his crown, if he wants, to remember him by."

Pit stood before the table upon which his brother had been laid in the open sun prior to the speaking of words over him. He did, indeed, take one black feather and stick it in his toga-pin.

"You meant the world to me," he softly said to the body. "I think almost everyone else wants to forget you, but I won't. I promise I won't! And I'll make sure nobody does, either!" He bowed his head. "Thank you for saving me, Dark Pit." He felt it important, for a change, to use the preferred and proper name, even though "Pittoo" had been an earned nickname between them. "You saved me more than once – and this one last time. How am I going to take care of myself without you now? Thank you. Thank you so much…"

Pit stopped short of saying a brotherly "I love you," simply because he knew that Dark Pit would find it disgustingly sappy. He tried to uncurl the stiff fingers from the Dark Pit Staff rested upon the corpse's chest. Pit found the fingers surprisingly soft – still stiff- but not as much as he'd expected them to be after this time.

Palutena ran up to him, along with Viridi.

"What in the world do you think you're doing? Viridi groused. Palutena gave him a similar look as the nature goddess was regarding him with.

Pit looked up at his goddess and at equal-eyes with the other goddess as he held the weapon carefully in his arms. "I… I want this, Lady Palutena," he said hesitantly. "I don't think it should be buried with him. I want to use it. Please? I'll take good care of it! I… I always felt a bit of 'him' whenever I used his weapons. I don't want that feeling to go away."

"Very well," Palutena said. "He should hold something of yours, then, don't you think?" The light-goddess plucked a long white feather from one of Pit's wings and handed it to him. "Here. You can put it in his hands."

Pit softly smiled and turned around to straighten his brother's body out and to arrange the hands. That was when he noticed something. He could feel the stitches beneath the toga and he noticed the rounded-out eye – with better packing this time within it. Pittoo didn't have any other wounds on him. Aside from being pale (and covered over with a layer of cosmetics to make him look like he was merely sleeping – an unconvincing display) the skin was pristine. Pit saw no wounds that would indicate a killing blow from any enemies that they knew. Even if he'd been poisoned by something – all of the Underworld enemies and Viridi's minions (if they had even been deployed) left tell-tale marks of it, marks which were absent. There were no scrapes or bruises, nothing that a typical Pittoo-fight would have left him with.

The young angel remembered his dream from the night before… Pittoo – as a little spirit or a little part of his mind or brain - told him something about that; hadn't he? The Dark Pit of his dream said something about never going through a good fight without getting at least scraped up a little. The way his body looked in waking reality, it looked almost as though he'd just been put to sleep and cut only as much as was necessary for harvesting.

Pit clutched the staff as he stood apart to let Lady Palutena position herself before the deities and other beings that had been gathered. She began a speech about Dark Pit and his nobility. Pit narrowed his eyes as she spoke, paying close attention to her body-movements and inflections in her speech. Something did not seem right. It was subtle, but she seemed… nervous? She was acting almost like a mortal who gave someone overly glowing words in order to absolve themselves from something and to keep a haunting from occurring.

But Pit knew that he was always supposed to trust his goddess.

He felt a sudden sick feeling, clutching Dark Pit's staff, when she told the crowd that Pittoo had "died a hero."

 _I died like a trapped animal…_

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_


	6. A Verdict Set in Stone

**ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 6: A Verdict Set in Stone**

The smoke of the incense curled up and around. Pit lit another stick and put it in the holder that rested atop the sealed stone sarcophagus in the garden north of Palutena's Temple. He placed one of his molted feathers there. This had become Pit's personal ritual whenever he shed one of his nice long flight-feathers. The angel would smile wistfully as he lit a strong, spicy, smoky offering and place a feather upon the grave the way he knew some mortals put flowers on the shrines dedicated to their loved ones. He looked up. The black marble statue had finally been finished. The larger than life (about four times to scale) Dark Pit gazed out at the empty sky, pointing a stone version of his staff out that way – a silent guardian to the north end of Skyworld's main island.

"It looks pretty good, doesn't it?" Pit said to himself.

 _Yeah. I actually like it. Did you have to choose strawberry incense this time? That junk tickles my nose!_

"Um… it's my nose, Pittoo," Pit corrected the voice inside his head.

 _Don't remind me._

Pit had been hearing his brother in the confines of his mind at an increasing rate over the last two months. It wasn't quite like how he would hear Lady Palutena through his laurel crown while on missions – it was stronger and more internal. It felt much more like a part of him. Pit also knew that no one else could hear it – not even gods. Viridi had failed to pick up on it when Pittoo chattered in his brain with her around. Palutena did not seem to hear or sense it at all.

Pit wondered about this a lot. He did not know if Pittoo just did not want to talk to anyone but him and was able to keep himself from being known even by deities or if it meant that Dark Pit was a part of the whole-Pit again. Perhaps the most likely answer according to most people, knowing Pit – was that he was just going crazy. Pit, however, did not like to think that he'd lost his mind. He'd gone through that once – talking to himself when he was running around inside what passed for Hades' body. It had not been fun.

Pit's "brain-Pittoo" felt real, though – utterly real. The angel himself was certain that his brother's soul had gravitated back to where it had been derived – namely back into him. Dark Pit asserted himself too much for Pit to think that it was anything other. Still, Pit could not share him with anyone else. He tried to tell Lady Palutena what was going on, but she said she did not sense any of Pittoo's energy and was worried that Pit was losing some of his grip due to grief. She had not been able to find Dark Pit's signature anywhere and said that he probably had been reincarnated. Pit thought she seemed a little hasty in this conclusion, like she was very eager to "move on." Then again, she was a goddess who had to watch over an entire domain.

Dark Pit was adamant inside of Pit's mind that he did not want to talk to "that woman."

At first, Pittoo had only come to Pit clearly in dreams. They talked a lot there and they even hung out like in old times. In some dreams they fought together, chasing away Pit's nightmares. Dark Pit spoke too often of his death for Pit's liking. He was certain that Palutena had killed him. Pit tried to explain to him that she only took parts from him after he'd died and that using him for transplant after a death in battle wasn't killing him. It was at this point that Dark Pit would always become frustrated.

That is when things started leaking into Pit's waking life a little more. Dark Pit became a little more insistent regarding the internal speech. – Pit never heard it audibly - it was always in the mind. It made him recall a lyric from a song that one of his friends at the Smash Brothers tournament had liked: _There's someone in my head, but it's not me…_

And he had to convince himself that he was not a lunatic in a hall. Dark seemed to sense his distress, but didn't seem to care much. He'd told Pit to just calm down. Maybe it was just because Pit missed his twin, but he did not try to chase this voice away. In fact, after a while, he got better at talking with it. Pittoo showed up in his mind much more clearly and much more often as time rolled on.

As Pit stood before the garden grave and the newly finished and polished statue, Pittoo seemed to be particularly talkative. Pit sensed a wistfulness that was not his own.

 _I had such a great body. It was pretty ripped, great muscle-tone…_

"It was just like mine, Pittoo."

 _No, it wasn't. It was more tall dark and handsome._

"You were the same height as me! And I think your Smash trophy was even shorter than mine!"

 _I was still better-looking._

"I'm sorry, Pittoo. You did know that I wanted to try to give your body back what was yours and bring you back."

 _You were an idiot. You would have gotten yourself killed! What's done is done, Pit. I just miss it… I miss being my own._

"The same way I want to fly on my own!"

 _Exactly. You know; we could go off on our own and find some errant flunky god to whip the piss out of and get you and me both our flight back._

"You know I can't do that, Pittoo," Pit said softly as he watched the incense burn down to a nub. "Lady Palutena needs me. I'm her right-hand man!"

 _I was thinking that we could whip the piss out of her and take the Power of Flight right from her…_

"Pittoo!"

 _Okay, so I know you're never going to do that… Mamma's boy… but it's not like she doesn't deserve it. I know you aren't letting yourself believe me yet, but she did kill me with her own hands._

"I don't know, Pittoo. I just… she loved you, too. I know you didn't see that, but I did."

 _I hate that inscription._

"Huh?"

 _The one engraved on my casket._

Pit squinted. "I think it says that you're a hero, right? Why would you hate that?"

 _Because it's not true. It says that I was a shadow that found the light. It thanks me for my service to Skyworld. It thanks me for my unwitting sacrifices. They weren't unwitting! And I wasn't willing! I was butchered like a lamb! I didn't even get a say in it! I was trying to find another way!_

"Do you want me to ask to have it changed?"

 _Don't bother. It won't happen. I like the statue, though. I like it a lot. I look appropriately fierce._

"Lady Palutena put a bit of magic into it, so it will shift and move sometimes and go through various poses you were known for."

 _Heh. Pit…do me a favor? Go up and touch it._

"Touch it? Why?"

 _Touch your forehead to my toes. I have an idea. I want to see if it will work._

"Um, okay."

Pit looked around to make sure no one was watching. He walked over to the statue that was on a raised platform behind the stone box that held his brother's physical remains. He touched the center of his forehead to the left big toe.

 _Aahahahaha! Perfect!_ Pittoo exclaimed in his brain.

"Okay…" Pit said hesitantly.

He looked up to see the black marble statue looking down at him, sticking out its black marble tongue.

"What the?" the white angel yelped, flaring out his wings and jumping back. "Now wait a minute! The stonecutters didn't even carve a tongue!"

 _It's nice to know I can make one from the core-stone itself._ Pittoo answered. _Yeah, that's what I wanted to try. Looks like I was able to put a little of my essence into there, thanks to the magic. Now its poses will be more authentic than ever!_

Pit was so impressed that he had to clap.

* * *

"The statue is mooning me," the goddess, Palutena said as she stepped by the doorway leading to the north garden with her morning cup of coffee.

"Nice cheeks," Viridi added. She'd come to Palutena's Temple today to discuss some matters of mutual interest.

"I didn't think I put that much magic and memory into that statue," Palutena sighed.

"It does seem rather lively," Viridi said with a smirk.

They both turned around. When they turned back, the stone Dark Pit was in his normal position, standing tall and shooting the sky.

"Does the thing do that often?" The Earth Goddess asked.

"Not the mooning, no," the Light Goddess answered. "This morning was the first time he dropped his shorts on me. I suppose I should be glad he was facing the way he was rather than facing forward."

"That would have changed the meaning definitively."

"I've noticed the statue facing the temple sometimes. Dark Pit has his staff pointed squarely at the throne in the recess behind us. I twirl my hand and change him back around like he's supposed to be, but he's stubborn, just like the real one was. Fifteen minutes later, it will be back, acting like its sniping at me."

"Hmmmm," Viridi mused as she casually stroked the thorny-stemmed flowers in the raised beds of the garden near the temple's entrance, willing them go grow and bloom, "Well, if the magic you placed into the statue came from your own will and your own memories, maybe this is an expression of your guilt?"

"My guilt, Viridi?"

"We both know what you did! I helped you, but only because Pit was dying."

"I've come to peace with it," Palutena said, somewhat coldly.

"I don't think you have," Viridi answered. "I can see you trembling! Your coffee mug, it's shaking ever so slightly and has been ever since we started talking about this!"

"I did what I had to do. You're the Goddess of Nature. You understand the balance of life and death."

"Didn't you tell Pit that Pittoo died heroically in battle?"

"Yes," Palutena answered, "That is what I told him. It is best for him to think well of his brother."

"Don't you mean that it's best for him to think well of you?" Viridi accused. "You will not be able to uphold the lie forever, not with those nervous twitches."

"Pit hasn't even asked. He doesn't seem to notice anything," Palutena answered. She put a finger to her chin, "Although I am a little worried about his mind of late."

"Weren't you always worried about his mind?" Viridi joked. "As brainless as he seems, he is pretty clever about some things. You're his goddess; you should know this by now! When the mask fails, what then?"

"It can't fail," Palutena said simply.

The Dark Pit statue had turned around again, his staff pointed squarely for the area that the goddesses were standing in.

* * *

Pit stiffened as he listened to the conversation the two goddesses were having.

Palutena's guard-captain had been cleaning out the feed buckets for Phos and Lux in one of the small pools used for watering plants in the north garden. The unicorn-pair and their chariot usually fell under the care of Phosphora. Viridi had used the chariot today. Pit wanted to ask her to have it and the animals back. The Lightning Chariot was rightfully his, for he had earned it. Phos and Lux had been entrusted to _his_ care by the poor old Chariot Master. He supposed he'd let Phosphora keep it in Viridi's domain simply because his duties left him too busy to care for supernatural equines. Mostly, however, he'd let the Forces of Nature keep it because Pittoo had been working for them. Dark Pit had loved driving that chariot and Pit had liked giving him that joy.

The small angel was planning to get the unicorns some fresh grain and give them a good curry-off but the only buckets he could find for grain were garden-watering buckets that were filthy with slime. Most things in Skyworld were marble or gilded, but a few items were purely for practical use.

So, Pit found himself away from his regular morning duties, vigorously scrubbing tough mildew out of a pair of wooden buckets outside the north end of Lady Palutena's temple, behind a thin wall, unwittingly listening into a conversation among gods that he was never meant to hear.

 _Do you hear that Pit?_ Dark Pit's voice asked within him. _Listen closely, you may just hear more._

Pit could not believe what he was hearing. Both he and his inner Pittoo became absolutely silent as Pit listened to the goddesses. He'd even stopped scrubbing.

"… Not that I don't think the dark copy was expendable," Viridi said. "He was like the last-hatched chick in an eagle's nest – insurance against anything happening to the elder spawn, but ultimately, they are born to perish!"

' _Spawn,' my tailfeathers!_

"Ssh, Pittoo!"

"I did not want to have to do that to him at all, I liked having them both around and Pit loved having a brother, but he was a perfect match for Pit and… I could not lose Pit." Palutena's voice was hesitant. "I was willing to do anything. I avoided it for as long as I could, but… at least the sleep took and he didn't feel a thing. But what I told Pit…" - a heavy sigh, "Maybe I should have let him fight me a little. Pittoo was proud. He would have rather gone down fighting."

"You might have damaged the organs you needed in him that way," Viridi pointed out.

"True, true," Palutena replied. "But just trapping him and putting him to sleep like that… I wonder if I should have let him try to find a cure… if we really did have enough time. I can't stop thinking about it, Viridi."

"Do you regret it? If you don't, I'd get rid of the unnecessary guilt. Then, maybe that statue would stop mooning you."

"I regret it, but not entirely," the Goddess of Light answered, "I regret not giving Dark Pit more time. I regret how I did it, not letting him get killed in a fair battle. I do not regret saving Pit, though. I will never regret that."

Pit gathered his buckets and walked toward the area that served as a stable in a daze. His wings trembled and he barely watched where he was going.

"I can't believe it."

 _Believe it._

"I'm so sorry, Pittoo… I just did not want to believe that she really did that to you.

 _You've always been a dog of your goddess. I understand. You've always looked up to her and you've always held her so highly that you couldn't imagine her doing anything wrong. Well, Pit… I've always been the side of you that's doubted her, the side that's always been ready to point out when someone does something dumb._

"I would have never agreed to it, Pittoo," Pit said slowly.

 _I know. This is why it was so wrong. Pit… I'm actually glad that you lived instead of me, but… she just had no right!_

Pit gathered grain and fed Phos and Lux. Stroking their necks and muzzles gave him a degree of comfort. He'd always liked animals and never got a chance to interact with them as much as he would have liked to. He'd fed the birds that came to land on the islands of Skyworld on some mornings, but he'd never kept any because he couldn't stand the thought of keeping something that could fly in a cage. Most other pets were just not a good idea up here. A cat or a dog could run right off the edge of the world. A typical horse would be even worse, with the danger of being spooked and the need for others of its kind around it to be happy.

Of course, a pet snake was out of the question. They reminded Pit of Medusa.

"I need to talk to Lady Palutena," Pit said. "I need answers from her."

 _You do that. If she's honest, you won't like what you hear. Heh. I'll be impressed if she actually owns up. Then what? What are you going to do?_

Pit eyed the unicorns and let his face go from a small smile into a frown.

 _They'll do nicely._

Pit waited for Viridi to leave, which she did by way of teleportation. Apparently, she had seen fit to honor his request to "play with the horsies" for a while.

As Viridi left for a proper place to teleport, she looked up at the Dark Pit statue. It was looking directly at her. The eyes were narrowed.

"He looks so much like Pit," she thought.

The dead eyes of the statue continued to glare. Viridi let out a sigh. "I know," she said to herself. "I am also a killer." She turned to the statue, "But, Pittoo… Nature is brutal."

As she began weaving the teleportation magic around herself, her usual excuse didn't make her feel any better.

After the inner-Pittoos signaled that all was clear, Pit came up to his goddess as she was trimming roses.

"Pit!" she said, "I haven't seen you all morning. There is nothing major going on today, so you may have the rest of the day off."

He bowed before her, as he usually did when addressing her directly. "Lady Palutena, I wanted to talk. I need to ask you about something."

Gently, she approached him and bade him to stand up. "What do you need to ask me about, Pit?"

Something of Dark Pit kicked in right then. Pit stood straight and tall and glared at his goddess with his two-differently colored eyes. "Lady Palutena, you're a murderer."

The goddess stepped back as though some monster had sent a barb through her heart. Her jaw hung. "Wh-what?"

"Pittoo has been talking in my head. His soul rejoined me. He kept telling me that you took his life. I thought he was just exaggerating because of the whole body-parts situation, but…"

"Pit, I've already told you that I don't sense his energy. You must be hallucinating. Is my little angel engaging in wishful thinking?

"No! He is here!"

"You can't always trust your own mind, Pit."

Pit sighed in frustration. "You just don't want him to be here."

The goddess lowered her gaze. "Of course I want him to be here. We both do. Pittoo was… special. One of a kind, even though that's a strange thing to say about him." She reached out to softly touch one of Pit's wings. She gasped as he flinched back.

"I overheard you and Viridi talking!"

"Oh, that…"

"Lady Palutena, I am your angel and have been… well, since you've created me! As your guard-captain, I want you to be honest with me!" Pit was shouting. His wings shivered and there were tears in his eyes. "Please! You've been cagey about it since he died! I want to know what happened to Pittoo! I want the full story! You owe me this much!"

Palutena sighed deeply and sat down on a raised wall. "Pit," she began, "You were very sick. Your organs were damaged. The infection had ravaged them beyond my healing capabilities. You were slowly dying. I could not be sure to find you in a reincarnation… or that something bad would happen to your soul. I needed you, Pit, I need you! As you are! As you!"

"So Dark Pit was just expendable?"

"Sadly, yes," Palutena answered. "I'm so sorry, Pit! He was… he was an aimless wanderer. He didn't belong to anyone."

"He didn't belong to you! I belonged to you!"

Palutena gave him a serious look. "He was just a reflection of you, Pit – literally. He was a flawed clone spawned from an unholy mirror! If you had died, he probably would have followed, anyway."

"But he had a life, Lady Palutena! Pittoo was his own! You took that away from him, without even asking us!"

"I asked him," Palutena said. "He refused."

Pit turned around and crossed his arms, facings the backs of his folded wings to her.

"He refused, Pit." Palutena said with emphasis.

"I would have refused, too," Pit said decisively. "I wouldn't have wanted him to die to save me."

"You sacrificed your wings for him," Palutena reminded her angel. "It was tantamount to sacrificing your life, yet even the suggestion that he might do the same for you was met with the utmost cowardice."

The top-feathers on Pit's wings bristled. "Maybe… he was trying to find another way! Maybe he was trying to help me in way that wouldn't involve sacrifice! Maybe he was trying to find the best solution, one that you hadn't thought of yet!"

"Careful, Pit," Palutena warned. "I am a god. If I couldn't find another solution to save you, no one could!"

Pit gently turned around. "Mortals surprise you all the time," he said. "It's one of the reasons why you like humans. Maybe an angel can surprise you once in a while, too!"

"Pit," the goddess sighed. "I wasn't happy about what I did. It was a last resort."

Pit strode over to her and did something impertinent. He grabbed her hand and glared at her. He watched her eyes widen in realization.

"He _is_ with you," she whispered.

Pit let go of her hand and ran off toward the out-buildings of Skyworld. Lady Palutena was left holding her hand to her aching chest. "I'm sorry," she said, letting the lightest of tears line her eyes. "I'm so sorry…"

She looked up. Dark Pit's statue had turned again and was aiming his staff right at her through the gathering twilight mists. Something clattering to the ground had caught her attention. She got up from her seated position to pick up a golden laurel-crown. A comet streaked across the sky. She knew that it was no comet, but the Lightning Chariot.

The goddess retreated to her throne room so that the centurions would not see her crying in earnest.

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_


	7. Paths Walked by Mortals

**ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 7: Paths Walked by Mortals**

Magnus was profoundly sick. He wandered to the fields outside of That First Town and into the waving dry-hay of an untended field.

"Beef garbage" he grumbled, lamenting the meal he'd had at one of the taverns where he'd risked the menu. Obviously, the most recent butcher's carcass they had hung in the back was starting to turn. He should have known it when he'd gotten a plate of meat that was green at the edges. They'd tried to cover it up with gravy, too…

Once he got a safe distance into the field and assessed that there was no one around to see a strong, badass mercenary lose his lunch and whine with stomach pain like a little child, he unloaded his cargo. What Magnus was really ashamed of was that this suffering wasn't earned in the usual way: A good night of hard drinking. After his pathetic wretching, he noticed a soft, yet sharp sound.

"Cryin'?" he asked himself as he followed the sounds, hoping that whoever else was out here hadn't just seen what he was doing. He came upon the source of the gentle disturbance.

"Hey, are you that angel? What are you doin' out here?"

Pit was curled up, knees to chest, hugging himself, his wings pressed flat against his back. He sniffled and turned his face to look up at the person whose voice he recognized.

"Whoa! What happened to your eye, kid?" Magnus asked, seeing the red iris of Pit's right eye.

"It's not mine," Pit said, drying his face ineffectually with his arm and standing up. He grabbed his scarf and dabbed it.

Magnus frantically looked around for a moment, looking at the sky, out across the land and over the city. "You aren't here to fight, are you?" the big man asked, "It's been mighty peaceful around here… the last thing this town needs is another invasion by Underworld flunkies. In fact, I was hoping to get movin' on."

"I'm not here for work," Pit said. "In fact I… I… I… I left her! I'm not working for Palutena anymore!"

"Whoa, kid! Hey! Calm down! Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

"It's a long story," Pit began. "But, there shouldn't be any danger. I came here because it looked peaceful. I needed… some time to myself."

* * *

Magnus had rented an inn room. He didn't have many things to move, but he sighed. Everything that was his was going to have to stay here for a little bit longer and he was running out of the money he'd gotten from his last job. There was a bed and a couch. He insisted that Pit take the bed. He was, as Pit called him "rough around the edges, but a really nice guy at heart."

Fortunately, for Pit, he did not have to explain who Dark Pit was. Magnus had met him some time after The Great Underworld War – or so it was being called. It was known by the humans of Angel Land by that name and "That time Hades went off his rocker and wanted to kill us all." Pit had introduced him to Magnus and Magnus had tried to recruit him into the mercenary band he was leading at the time. Dark Pit refused, making a choice to work for Viridi instead. As a mere mortal man, and an almost perpetually-broke one at that, Magnus couldn't offer the black-winged angel a dental plan or the Power of Flight.

"So she cut him up? Oh, that's rough," Magnus said as Pit sat on the side of the bed, slightly swinging his dangling legs. "I don't blame you for leavin' her, then."

"She did it to save me," Pit said under his breath. "I didn't want this."

"Eh," Magnus grunted. "Now you know why most of us don't trust the gods anymore. Some do, but the sacrifices they demand to just not mess with us… and they'll always do what's most useful to them, in the end. I see it all the time with power. The strong will always kick the butts of those weaker."

"Do you kick the weak around, Magnus?" Pit asked; eyes wide.

"Nah. Not with people. I prefer kicking around the strong. It's more of a challenge, more fun. And monsters. I don't mind punting them around if they're weaklings, because they're monsters. Not everyone likes a challenge like I do, though."

"Well," Pit said sadly, "Palutena was like that. Strong, I mean, and strong in the way that she liked protecting weaker beings. Then… Pittoo…"

"Sounds to me like she was just desperate. Isn't she like, your mom or something?"

"Well… It was always more complicated than that."

Magnus looked up and at the wall, his eyes suddenly distant. "I'd do anything to get my kid back, Pit. Anything. If I could relive the past, I'd probably sacrifice something I thought of as a shadow or only a part to a whole to bring him back to my arms. I'll never hear his voice call me 'Daddy' again."

"I'm sorry, Magnus."

"Don't be sorry. You had nothin' to do with it. In fact, you helped me fight off those responsible. I thank you for that. Just don't ever borrow my body again. That was weird."

"I won't."

"You do and you'll have to deal with the mental scars. I'm pretty sure I do things with my body that you're way too innocent for."

"Shut up, Pittoo! We aren't doing that!" Pit yelped to himself.

"Huh? You losin' your mind already Angel Face?"

"No," Pit tried to explain. "Dark Pit… he's kind of become a presence in my mind ever since… you know. He's very stubborn. Even when dead he refuses to die."

"I think I understand," Magnus replied. "I kept hearing my little boy for weeks after he was taken from me. I'd turn around, expecting to see him run up behind me. Then I'd remember I watched him die. Grief is awful like that."

"No, not like that," Pit insisted. "I mean, I actually hear his voice inside my head… kind of like I did with Palutena when I had my laurels, but it's a bit more 'me.' It's hard to explain. I think it's because he was created from me – my soul – that his soul is back with mine… but he's still himself. We're like, two souls sharing a body."

"So you're a schizophrenic."

"Is that even the right definition? No… He's there. That's all I know. I would give anything to have him flesh and blood again, though. He's my little brother, my twin…"

"Your clone…"

"My brother," Pit growled. "He was and is my brother. I think I'd do what you'd do for your child to bring him back. What the goddess did for me… well, it'd be like killing your brother, or best friend… or your child… to save your life."

"I'd give my life for my boy… never would want it the other way around, left hurtin' as I am."

"Exactly." Pit's wings drooped. "Pittoo is kind of still with me, but… I don't know whether he's real or not, you know? – Telling me you're real doesn't do anything, Pittoo! You're still all in my head!"

"You sound like one confused angel," Magnus said, gently putting a hand on Pit's shoulder. "This is the path we mortals walk. As a born and bred human, I know some ways to deal with it."

"Like what?"

"Well, do you want to come drinkin'? That always cheers me up for a while… blacks out some bad memories most of the time, too."

"I don't know…"

"I can vouch for ya. I don't know anyone in this town that does age-limits anyway. We'll drink good and hard! You'll be lucky to wake up in the same bed you're sittin' on!"

"Eeep!"

"Aw, come on. They say that wine brings truth. If you wanna hang out on the surface with us, you may as well learn to be a man!"

* * *

Pit found the tavern that Magnus took him to noisy and full of smoke. At least the smoke seemed to cover up some of the other smells there. He wore a cloak to conceal his wings. It wouldn't do for anyone besides Magnus to know there as an angel in their midst – they'd probably panic or try to strip him of his feathers to sell or something.

"Try some of this," Magnus said, pouring him a cloudy glass of a clear, rich brown liquid. "Heh, heh, heh."

Pit picked up the glass and scrutinized it. "I've had wine before," he said, "but that was godly-wine, special stuff that's for healing."

"Trust me," Magnus said with a smile, "once you down this, you'll be feelin' no pain!"

 _Come on, Pit!_ Pittoo said inside his mind, _I died too young! I never got the chance to get drunk! I want to know what it's like!_

Pit downed the small drink. He immediately snorted and coughed. "It burns! What is this? Torch-fuel? This stuff could run the Great Sacred Treasure!"

Magnus slapped his knee and laughed heartily. He poured him another, but said to wait just a few minutes before taking another shot.

"I don't know how it is with your folk," Magnus said, "but you should be feelin' it."

"I'm feelin' it!" Pit exclaimed. Several men in the bar looked his way. Pit leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up. He would have fallen to the floor if Magnus hadn't gotten up and steadied him.

"Kinda fun, eh?"

"Yeah!"

Pit felt his head swimming and like he didn't exactly have to worry about his inhibitions anymore. As such, Dark Pit found a window to slip his own will in. His essence oozed over Pit's brain like syrup.

"Ah, so this is how it feels," the angel that was outwardly Pit said. "Pretty nice. I think I'd like to get a little drunker, though!"

And with that, another shot went down. "More!"

"Easy, kid," Magnus said. "You ain't used to this. Like I said, I don't know what yer body is like, but I wouldn't wanna kill ya."

"Too late for that!" Pittoo slurred.

"Hey, why did your voice change?" Magnus asked.

"Hah!" the inner-twin said, pointing Pit's finger at him. "You're that merc!"

"Of course I am, Pit. Geeze… get an angel drunk…"

"I'm not Pit!" the Dark Pit inside the light-casing asserted, "I'm…. Pittoo! Urk! No! I'm… I'm Dart…Dark Pit!"

"Well, you do sound like Dark Angel Face," Magnus replied. "Guess you really are messin' with Angel Face's noggin. Didn't know a little booze would bring ya out."

"Forget that!" Pittoo said, eyeing a few of the women at the bar. "I never knew mortal women could look so good…"

"Hoo, boy," Magnus sighed. "You've got the booze-googles on, don't ya? Okay, so the one on the left… yeah… she's about my type, nice and…big... Urgh! I don't think you've got a chance, though."

He grabbed the neck of Pit's cloak and yanked him back. "No you don't, hot pants. Nothin' good comes from humans and angels doin' that kinda thing."

"How do you know?" Dark Pit groused. "I lived too short a life to get drunk, now that I've done that, I just realized I died a virgin!"

Pit's wings shuddered.

"No!" the Dark Pit voice protested to what was apparently the inner Pit voice. "You do not get a say in this! You had your chance and you still have a chance! Now that I have to use your body, I've realized I have a few regrets!"

"Okay," Magnus said, shrugging, "You're welcome to try, but I don't think you're gonna get anywhere, kid."

Perhaps predictably, or just because any Pit is still a Pit, he went up to the very busty lady in a red dress at the end of the bar and asked her if she fell from Heaven. He earned a roll of her eyes and a "Get lost, kid!"

When he persisted and tried to grab her rear end, he earned himself a swift, brutal smack.

"Ow...that stings!" Pittoo complained. "What did I do wrong?"

"Yer a baby-face, Angel Face," Magnus explained to him. "You ain't ever gonna get a mature woman lookin' like that."

"Can you get her for me?"

Magnus laughed, "Oh, I don't think I could afford that one. Come on, kid. You're drunk, time to go home."

With that, Magnus downed that last of his own liquor and shepherded a laughing and stumbling angel back to their inn room. He did not know how much longer he could take the arguing between the two voices before Pit finally fell asleep. Things that happened the next morning were things he would later never want to talk about, nor would the staff ever be able to fully clean out of the wooden floor. The conflicting voices continued to squabble over "Never getting drunk again" and "No way, that was fun!" until Pit's native voice became dominant again.

When he calmed down and had some much needed coffee, Pit looked up at Magnus. "I don't know where we go from here," he said. "I don't really have anywhere to go."

"Well," Magnus replied, "You still can fight, right?"

"Oh, yeah. I brought my primary weapon with me, but I won't have access to everything I used to have anymore, not as long as I'm avoiding…her."

"But I've seen you scrap. How'd you like to be a traveling mercenary, kid?"

"Oh, I don't know…"

"It's not a bad life most of the time. It's hard, but you earn a little scratch and get to be a hero – even if it's a hero for hire. I'm pretty selective in the jobs I take, so we won't be working for any dark lords or anything like that. You'd be pretty much doin' what you've always been doin' – killin' monsters and stuff, but you'd be workin' for yourself rather than some high n' mighty goddess."

"You really think I have what it takes?"

"I know you do, kid. We've watched each other's backs before. You've got nowhere to go, and, as of right now, I had a falling out with my old crew – greedy bastards, so I could stand to start a new one."

Pit smiled; his eyes bright. "Hey, Pittoo says he wants to be a merc! Let's try it."

"Alright, then. We'll get you a good hangover cure and we'll head out and scout for jobs."

So, Pit began to take paths walked by mortals.

* * *

 _ **To Be Continued…**_


	8. Black, White and Gray Skies

**ONE BLACK FEATHER**

 **Chapter 8: Black, White and Gray Skies**

Phos and Lux came home. The Goddess Palutena saw them descend like a bolt of lightning on one of the outer-islands of her domain. She greeted them, calmed them and examined their empty chariot.

"Where is your master?" she asked Phos as she took Lux's tracings. "He really isn't coming back, is he?"

The goddess blinked back tears that threatened to spill from the edges of her eyes. She led the unicorns to where they had been previously stabled. It wasn't a good sign for them to come home without Pit. She wondered if he would summon them again. Perhaps Pit just needed a little time alone.

Palutena looked at Pit's laurel crown as she teleported back to Pittoo's grave. She rested it atop the stone sarcophagus. She looked up at Dark Pit's statue. It was in its proper position – "guarding" Skyworld, looking out into the star-dappled expanse. Despite its stillness, the goddess was sure she felt a bit of Pittoo's presence radiating from it.

She heard his voice inside her head, so faint she nearly missed it: _The connection is broken. Remember that you are the one who broke it._

The goddess' mind flashed back to the night she had replaced Pit's failing organs with those of his doppelganger. She remembered with utter clarity her poor little Pittoo's sleeping face, gently breathing. She'd stroked his cheek before she got to work on him, her soft hands already bloodied from prying Pit open and fixing him for the exchange. She winced as she remembered the hitch in Pittoo's breath when she'd made her first cut and how she worried that he might have felt it. She'd used her power as a goddess to send him deeper into sleep. She tried not to think of the eye "looking" at her as she took it from him. She bit her lip and hunched over the stone coffin as she remembered how Dark Pit's mouth and throat had instinctually struggled with stopped-breath as she took his lungs. She was careful to keep the heart beating after that – the final piece, which was exchanged very swiftly.

Palutena wept as she remembered closing the harvested body up, stitching it gingerly. She tried to remind herself how overjoyed she was when she saw Pit breathing easy for the first time in weeks. She had focused more on the living angel, then, than the dead one.

"Were you right, Pittoo?" she asked, not expecting any answer. "Could you have saved your brother if I had only waited?"

She received no answer.

* * *

"So, Icarus… I never thought you went for places like this."

She had found him after some weeks and decided to pay him a visit. This was awkward for them both.

"Well, strange times call for strange places," the cloaked boy who was being addressed as "Icarus," answered. They sat at a table in a small restaurant with dirty walls.

"I like the cloak. It looks like it belongs to someone we met once."

"More like a pair of someones," Icarus said ruefully, "Kind of like I used to be, hum? Two sets of wings that will never fly together again? Magnus and I made a good haul on our last job, so I was able to afford a coat like the Robins from Smash to hide my wings. You seem to be having a hard time hiding yourself. Everyone is looking at you."

"It's the way it used to be, Icarus… you and your Minerva, out touring the towns and shrines."

Indeed, Palutena had made herself out to be as plain as possible in her mortal guise, but something about her smooth skin and the luster of her long hair always made her look overly noble for almost any area she tried to visit on the surface-world. Even with its color changed to a dull brown, it always gave her away as "someone a little different." Pit, meanwhile, was sitting there with a long duster-coat hiding every inch of his back and a cowl resting a dark shadow over his face.

He just didn't look right.

"It can't be that way again," Pit said lowly. One red eye shone from beneath his hood.

"Pi-Icarus, please," Palutena said, "Be reasonable! I had to save your life. You are… more precious to me than you will ever know! I regret what happened."

"Do you regret killing him?"

"Y-yes. Very much so."

Pit pulled back the cowl and gave her what she took to be a hopeful look. He then put the hood back over his head and looked away. "I…I just can't trust you yet."

Palutena noticed his voice breaking. "Can't trust me? You've always trusted me."

"Life takes us on funny paths," he answered. "Not like a clown, either – though clowns are creepy, so I guess I'm glad…"

"You're going off on a trail again," Palutena reminded him. "You're still my Pit."

"I'm not!" Pit blurted out, the available light catching the red eye beneath the shadow again. "I mean… I am… oh, I'm so confused!"

"You don't have to be," the goddess gently said. "We can go back home and we'll figure out what to do next, okay?"

Pit shook his hooded head. "No," he said softly. "Pittoo doesn't want to. Neither do I. We're free now. I… I miss you, but I'm hurt. I need to figure things out on my own for a while, okay?"

Palutena sighed. "Okay. I'll respect that. However, if another war with the Underworld comes up, I don't think I'll be able to give you a choice. I need you, Pit."

"If another war like that comes up," Pit answered, "I'll fight – but it will be for the people. I'm not sure I'm ready to really give it my all for you again, yet."

"I'm sorry…"

"That won't bring Pittoo back."

* * *

Pit and Magnus found that living and traveling together had an effect on both their morale and their morality. For his part, Pit felt more "manly" just being around Magnus. He felt himself "toughening up." He learned from him many of the ways the mortals he'd always protected loved – about strength-of-heart and pain and life in general. He did not learn anything "out of his league" according to Magnus. The man refused to try to get Pit any kind a date or a bed-partner, but Pit didn't really want one – not even for Pittoo. The one time he'd tried had been merely a whim of Dark Pit's when they were drunk.

Magnus, for his part, felt that Pit was making him a bit "soft." He was refusing to take jobs he'd normally not have a problem with – jobs that would require the killing of men. Magnus had always been careful in the past regarding the jobs he took – it just wouldn't do to wind up owing a debt to a bad band of organized criminals or to wind up working for a tyrannical warlord, still, having Pit as a traveling partner made him even more wary. Magnus had no trouble "taking out the trash" for the right price, but he worried that Pit would have a problem with it. The kid might not have been under the employ of an aloof protector-goddess anymore, but Magnus knew that he was still attached to the idea of "protecting human life."

It wasn't so much that he worried about destroying him – it was a matter of thinking that he would hesitate in a fight. Even if Pit's rejected goddess saw fit to bring him back before his soul flew or to protect him from a fatal blow, Magnus knew he was just a man and did not have that same luxury. He had an aging body, no pretty wings to hide and he was unwilling to take unnecessary risks. He remembered how Pit was when he'd first met the kid – how distraught he was at the thought that he might have killed his ex-partner, Gaol. The sellsword decided that it was best, as long as they were together, to stick to work involving monster-slaying and artifact hunts.

That was how they wound up on a fateful job – one that would put them at risk of both killing and being killed - but one that Pit was willing to take. Keeping their ears open around one town led them to stories of a "magic mirror" a local noble was keeping in his manor. Tracing the rumors of this mirror with a bit of detective work – something that Pit was surprised that Magnus was good at, since he had the look and mannerisms of a "more brawn than brains" type, they learned that this mirror, much like the Mirror of Truth, was designed to make copies of things.

"We don't know if the copies are meant to be living things, Angel Face," Magnus cautioned as they stood beneath a dark wall, looking up at the towers of the manor in the moonlight the night they chose to try to infiltrate the structure.

"We've gotta try," Pit replied, giving Magnus a pleading look. "This could be my chance to set things right again – to give my brother's soul its own body like it should have. He wants to try it."

"Well, alright. I think we can scale the wall, and then you can just glide on into that west window if you think you can jump that far."

Pit flared out his wings proudly. "Oh, I might not be able to fly on my own, but I've got gliding covered!"

"I'll go below and keep the guards off your back. Don't give me that look. I'll just knock 'em out. I don't wanna kill anyone I don't have to. If all goes right, this will be a quick break-in-and-go, nice and simple."

"Thank you, Magnus."

The plan went off without problems as the manor was full of sleep. Magnus even found the front-gate guards to be lackluster. They'd been very easy to sneak up upon, even with his large frame. Then, as large as he was, he'd gained a knack for being stealthy when he needed to be.

Pit, being small and light, was decidedly stealthier by nature. He ran down the halls, ducking in shadows and behind whenever he heard a noise. He was spooked by a rat running along a hallway in the darkness. "I guess even the rich have these problems," he said to himself.

 _I see a glint. Idiot didn't even lock up that room._

"You're right, Pittoo," Pit said to other presence inside his head. "I see it, too. I wonder if this is it!"

The rat entered the room and was caught in a beam of moonlight. It shone pale off the surface of an ornate, floor-length mirror with a frame decorated in a motif of carved bones and trailing serpents. The thing certainly had the look of a thing crafted by dark sorcery. The rat stood up on its hind-limbs and sniffed the mirror, letting its whiskers brush against the glass. It squeaked and jumped back as a shadow materialized from it and ran out across the floor.

"A black rat!" Pit softly exclaimed. He kept his voice to a whisper for fear of waking the lord of the manor or his servants. The original gray rat wandered off to corner of the room. The black rat glared at Pit with a shining red eye and slinked off into the shadows.

 _Couldn't have had a better test,_ Dark Pit said. _That was lucky._

"It sure was! Okay, Pittoo, are you ready to get your body back?"

 _Damn straight!_

Pit stepped before the mirror. He beheld his image within it. It was darkly colored – dark hair, dark clothing, dark wings and red eyes. While there was a time when such an image of himself would have frightened him, having gotten to know that image made him smile.

"There you are, Dark Pit," he said softly as he raised a hand to the mirror and gently pressed his fingers to the image. Immediately, he felt his heart rate speed up. His middle ached. All of the breath was sucked from his lungs. His head hurt as his right eye started bulging out, threatening to slip its socket. Pit slammed his eyelid shut, trying to keep it in. He grabbed himself, trying to will his heart and his lungs stop pounding against this sternum and ribcage.

 _Stop it, Pit!_ the Pittoo-voice inside him cried. _Get away from the mirror! It's not working right! Something's wrong! Something's wrong!_

Pit felt like the image in the mirror was trying to re-harvest everything that had been Pittoo. He fell to the wooden floor and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the gray rat. It was in a similar position, fidgeting on the floor with blood and foam coming out of its mouth. The red-eyed black rat was busily nibbling into the nape of its neck, trying to eat it and to drag it away at the same time.

Pit was in agony. He could taste iron in his mouth. His center throbbed. He was curled up in a fetal position and could not get up. He felt a mighty wind above him and heard the shattering of glass. He saw a few slivers of mirror slide down to the floor, skittering next to nose.

"Angel Face!" came a familiar deep voice. Magnus took his sword out of the mirror, which he'd swung before the enchanted glass could register his image or even the sword's. He stowed the massive blade on his back and caught his breath as he heard footsteps approaching. He grabbed up Pit roughly. Pit moaned.

"Uck!"

"Sorry, kid. I'm gonna get you out of here. Just hang on, okay?"

Everything was a blur for Pit after that, a blur and random stabs of pain as Magnus moved with him. His eye was staying back in, so at least there was that. It has difficult to see anything with one eye washed in tears of blood.

"I'm taking you to one of Palutena's shrines!" Magnus said. "Maybe she'll find you and be able to help you."

"N-no!" Pit protested weakly. He was already laid out upon an altar before he was able to choke it out.

"I'm sorry, kid," Magnus said. "I don't know how to help you and I don't wanna watch you die! Besides, these shrines are sanctuary! I've used them plenty of times to hide until the heat's off!"

"No…no…" Pit struggled as he saw and felt a beam of light. The embrace of it was warm and familiar. His bloody vision faded into that light.

* * *

Pit awakened to the gentle chirping of birds. He lay on his back upon his soft wings and upon an even softer pile of cushions, sheets and pillows. His bed was in the open air near columns. The ceiling was a dome above him. He felt well, like he'd had a great rest. Everything smelled nice.

It was familiar and this was what alarmed him.

 _We are home._ Dark Pit said within _. It is okay, Pit. The mirror we found was a fraud. The magic was unstable. Someone was probably trying to use it to breed shadow-soldiers or something – something short-lived, something expendable._

Pit felt a stab to the heart with that. Pittoo apparently felt it.

 _Not like me, Pit,_ he assured his original _. I was your inner truth. You always knew that._

"And so you are the same, I guess," Pit replied hollowly.

Palutena walked between the arches. She held Pit's laurel-crown. "I'm glad to see you're awake, Pit," she said. She stayed apart from the bed, letting Pit get up on his own. She was treating him as though he were a wary animal. She knew that it was the only way to treat him right now.

Pit sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "I'm not going anywhere," he said, looking at the floor. "You don't have to treat me like I'm going to bolt." He then began crying softly. "I don't have anywhere to go!"

"I can send you back to the surface if you want me to, Pit," Palutena said softly. "You can even take Phos and Lux. I won't keep you anywhere you don't want to be."

"I don't have anywhere to go!" Pit said again, drawing in a sharp breath. "I… I had this hope, and…." He put a hand to his heart. "Pittoo isn't going anywhere. I can't bring him back. I don't think I'm that great at being a mortal, either."

"I need you, Pit," Palutena said. She was surprised when he let her walk up to him and gently wrap her arms around him. She stroked the bases of his wings the way she used to do whenever he was sad. "You have no idea how much I haven't been able to get done without you. I miss you."

"It doesn't erase what you did," the angel said bitterly.

"No, it doesn't. There's no taking that back."

"I'll stay," Pit said, looking up and drying his face, "It won't be like it was before, though. It can't be. I'll stay until I can find a place to be, okay? That's all… a place for me and Pittoo."

"I understand."

"And the humans. They're worth fighting for…. But I need to know that I can be free."

"You can come and go as you wish," Palutena decided. "I will give you no less."

She stroked one of his wings. "Hey, what's this?"

"Leave it alone!" Pit yelped.

"Your one black feather is back." The goddess smiled.

"I'm keeping it. It's my lucky feather."

* * *

A year passed for residents of Skyworld, drifting for them as though it belonged in a dream.

Pit's wings grew out in a mottled display. The tops remained as white as they ever were, but the bottom feathers, the flight-feathers, eventually grew in all black. Pit no longer had just one "lucky feather" to remind him of Dark Pit, he had wings full of black feathers.

He watched over Skyworld with a kind of strained loyalty. When he thought about it, he did still love Lady Palutena, but he served in a professional manner now. He was only here until her new head-angel grew up. She had created a fresh child. After that, he wanted to take to wandering. It was the Pittoo in him that wanted this. Pit never could give the goddess the childlike trust he used to. He found out that some things that had been broken really could not be mended without scars. He thought about this as he whenever he touched the light scars on his chest beneath his toga.

As it was, though his body looked the same age as it had before he first fell sick and lost his brother, Pit felt older. He was an immortal who felt old. He also was a little wiser and a little sadder.

Pittoo stopped "talking" to him. The inner-voice of Dark Pit became more seldom until it seemed to "fade away" over time. Pit caught himself saying, of his own accord, very "Pittoo" things every once in a while, but it wasn't the same as having his twin's will assert itself. Pit felt, perhaps, like he had before Dark Pit was born – that the elements of himself that his twin had been made from had integrated into him again. It was a lonely feeling.

Pit knew, however, that Dark Pit was still there – a part of him, always. After all, whenever he saw his reflection in a normal mirror or a pool of water he had one red eye and many lucky feathers.

* * *

 _ **The End.**_

This started out as a Trillian / AIM roleplay between 23 Blenders and myself. We decided that the basic story was interesting enough to make into a fanfic, so here it is.

The premise of this was initially inspired by an episode of _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ I saw. The show made fun of a 1970's-era film called _Parts: The Clonus Horror._ It was a low-budget, poorly-acted movie that deserved the riffing, but unlike a lot of their movies, had a plot that I actually found interesting. The film was about a man who learns that his society is a people-farm for the clones of powerful politicians and that they are being groomed to provide organ transplants. We find Pittoo to be fiercely-unique among hero-clones and shadow archetypes, so the tired old "expendable clone" trope of science fiction was especially fun to play for drama on him.


End file.
